Catherine had spoken very gently, looking once more in the fire; when she ceased there was a space of utter silence in the little room.  Then her eyes came back furtively to mine; and presently they were twinkling with their old staid merriment.

“But to be Number Three!” she said again.  “My poor old Bob!”

And she smiled upon me, tenderly, from the depths of her alter-egoism.

“Well,” I said, “he never will be.”

“God forbid!” cried Catherine.

“He has forbidden.  It will never happen.”

“Is she dead?” asked Catherine, but not too quickly for common decency. 
She was not one to pass such bounds.

“Not that I know of.”

It was hard to repress a sneer.

“Then what makes you so sure—­that he never could?”

“Well, he never will in my time!”

“You are good to me,” said Catherine, gratefully.

“Not a bit good,” said I, “or—­only to myself ...  I have been good to no one else in this whole matter.  That’s what it all amounts to, and that’s what I really came to tell you.  Catherine ...  I am married to her myself!”

THE END