extremely uncomfortable. She changed the reclining position in which she
had been leaning back in her chair, and she sat erect, with a hand closed
upon each arm of the chair.

"Richard," she said. "do you think that it is right of you to tell any
one, even friends, anything that you have never yet confessed to me?"

"Ethel," replied Richard, "although I cannot promise that you will be
entirely proud of my conduct when you have heard this episode of my past,
I do say that there is nothing in it to hurt the trust you have placed in
me since I have been your husband. Only," he added, "I hope that I shall
not have to tell any story at all."

"Oh, yes you will!" we all exclaimed together; and the men looked eager
while the women sighed.

The rest of us were much older than Richard, we were middle-aged, in
fact; and human nature is so constructed, that when it is at the age when
making love keeps it busy, it does not care so much to listen to tales of
others' love-making; but the more it recedes from that period of
exuberance, and ceases to have love adventures of its own, the greater
become its hunger and thirst to hear about this delicious business which
it can no longer personally practice with the fluency of yore. It was for
this reason that we all yearned in our middle-aged way for the tale of
love which we expected from young Richard. He, on his part, repeated the
hope that by the time his turn to tell a story was reached we should be
tired of stories and prefer to spend the evening at the card tables or in
the music room.

We were a house party, no brief "week-end" affair, but a gathering whose