deal. And I've given them all a mighty surprise."

"I believe that is the longest compliment you ever paid me--and
because I made a good impression on some one else. What irony!"

She pouted charmingly, but her eyes were wistful. "Now sit down and
talk to me. I've scarcely seen you since we arrived."

"Oh! Remember you are married to this old ruffian. You'll see enough
of me in the next thirty or forty years. Run to bed and get your
beauty sleep. I promised to go to the Union Club."

"The Club? You went to the Club last night and the night before and
the night before that. Every night since we arrived--"

"I haven't seen half my old cronies yet and they are waiting for a
good old poker game. Sleep is what you want after such an exciting
day. Remember, I doctor the nerves of all the women in San Francisco
and this is a hard climate on nerves. Wonder more women don't go to
the devil."

He kissed her again and escaped hurriedly. Those were the days when
women wept facilely, "swooned," inhaled hartshorn, calmed themselves
with sal volatile, and even went into hysterics upon slight
provocation. Madeleine Talbot merely wept. She believed herself to be
profoundly in love with her jovial magnetic if rather rough husband.
He was so different from the correct reserved men she had been
associated with during her anchored life in Boston. In Washington she
had met only the staid old families, and senators of a benignant
formality. In Europe she had run across no one she knew who might