CHAPTER XIV.
There was silence for a moment and then Price said awkwardly: "It is a pity you haven't the chain or you could wear the ruby for the rest of the evening." She turned her eyes from the window and stared at him.

"I have the chain--" She raised her hand to the tip of her bodice--"but--but--you can't mean--it isn't possible that you can forgive me." "I think I have taken very bad care of you.

What are you, after all, but a brilliant child?
I am thirty-three--" He suddenly tore off his domino with, a feeling of rage, and thrust his hands into his friendly pockets.

He had never made many verbal protestations to her, although the most exacting wife could have found no fault with his love-making.

But to-night he felt dumb; he was mortally afraid of appearing high and noble and magnanimous.
"You see, things always happen during the first years of married life.
Perhaps more happens--I mean in a pettier way--when the man has leisure and can see too much of his wife.