those who danced had heard him jeer, and his presence caused him mild surprise.  The editor, leaning forward, unconscious that he was conspicuous, searched the ballroom with his eyes.  They were anxious, unsatisfied; they gave to his pale face the look of one who is famished.  Then suddenly his face lit and he nodded eagerly.  Following the direction of his eyes, Jimmie saw his wife, over the shoulder of her partner, smiling at Maddox.  Her face was radiant; a great peace had descended upon it.

Jimmie knew just as surely as though Jeanne had told him.  He walked out and sat down on the low wall of the terrace with his back to the club-house and his legs dangling.  Below him in the moonlight lay the great basin of the golf links, the white rectangle of the polo fields with the gallows-like goals, and on a hill opposite, above the tree-tops, the chimneys of his house.  He was down for a tennis match the next morning, and the sight of his home suggested to him only that he ought to be in bed and asleep.

Then he recognized that he never would sleep again.  He went over it from the beginning, putting the pieces together.  He never had liked Maddox, but he had explained that by the fact that, as Maddox was so much more intelligent than he, there could be little between them.  And it was because every one said he was so intelligent that he had looked upon his devotion to Jeanne rather as a compliment.  He wondered why already it had not been plain to him.  When Jeanne, who mocked at golf as a refuge for old age, spent hours with Maddox on the links; when, after she had declined to ride with her husband, on his return he would find her at tea with Maddox in front of the wood fire.

That night, when he drove Jeanne home, she still was joyous, radiant; it was now she who chided him upon being silent.

He waited until noon the next morning and then asked her if it were true.  It was true.  Jeanne thanked him for coming to her so honestly and straightforwardly.  She also had been straightforward and honest.  They had waited, she said, not through deceit but only out of consideration for him.

“Before we told you,” Jeanne explained, “we wanted to be quite sure that I was sure.”

The “we” hurt Jimmie like the stab of a rusty knife.

But he said only:  “And you are sure?  Three years ago you were sure you loved me.”

Jeanne’s eyes were filled with pity, but she said:  “That was three years ago.  I was a child, and now I am a woman.  In many ways you have stood still and I have gone on.”

“That’s true,” said Jimmie; “you always were too good for me.”

“No woman is good enough for you,” returned Jeanne loyally.  “And your brains are just as good as mine, only you haven’t used them.  I have questioned and reached out and gained knowledge of all kinds.  I am a Feminist and you are not.  If you were you would understand.”