well have been, speak softly and step lightly.

"My dear Mrs. Cowperwood," he argued, seated in her modest West
Philadelphia parlor one spring afternoon, "I need not tell you
what a remarkable man your husband is, nor how useless it is to
combat him. Admitting all his faults--and we can agree, if you
please, that they are many"--Mrs. Cowperwood stirred with
irritation--"still it is not worth while to attempt to hold him
to a strict account. You know"--and Mr. Steger opened his thin,
artistic hands in a deprecatory way--"what sort of a man Mr.
Cowperwood is, and whether he can be coerced or not. He is not
an ordinary man, Mrs. Cowperwood. No man could have gone through
what he has and be where he is to-day, and be an average man. If
you take my advice you will let him go his way. Grant him a
divorce. He is willing, even anxious to make a definite provision
for you and your children. He will, I am sure, look liberally
after their future. But he is becoming very irritable over your
unwillingness to give him a legal separation, and unless you do
I am very much afraid that the whole matter will be thrown into
the courts. If, before it comes to that, I could effect an
arrangement agreeable to you, I would be much pleased. As you
know, I have been greatly grieved by the whole course of your
recent affairs. I am intensely sorry that things are as they are."

Mr. Steger lifted his eyes in a very pained, deprecatory way. He
regretted deeply the shifty currents of this troubled world.

Mrs. Cowperwood for perhaps the fifteenth or twentieth time heard
him to the end in patience. Cowperwood would not return. Steger
was as much her friend as any other lawyer would be. Besides, he