Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/283

 Was Felix Kennaston content?—that is a question he alone could have answered.

"But why shouldn't I have been?" he said, a little later, in reply to the pointblank query. "I had a handsome home, two motors, money in four banks, and a good-looking wife who loved and coddled me. The third prince gets no more at the end of any fairy tale. Still, the old woman spoke the truth, of course—one pays as one goes out Oh, yes, one pays!—that is an inevitable rule; but what you have to pay is not exorbitant, all things considered So, be off with your crude pessimisms, Harrowby!"

And indeed, when one comes to think, he was in no worse case than any other husband of his standing. "Who wins his love must lose her," as no less tunefully than wisely sings one of our poets—a married bard, you may be sure—and all experience tends to prove his warbling perfectly veracious. Romancers, from Time's nonage, have invented and have manipulated a host of staple severances for their puppet lovers—sedulously juggling, ever since Menander's heyday,