* * * * *

But one night when he came home, Edith, who sat in the living room reading aloud to her smaller boys, gave him a significant look which warned him something had happened.  And turning to take off his overcoat, in the hall he almost stumbled upon a pile of hand luggage, two smart patent leather bags, a hat trunk and a sable cloak.

“Hello,” he exclaimed.  “What’s this?  Who’s here?”

“Laura,” Edith answered.  “She’s up in Deborah’s room, I think—­they’ve been up there for over an hour.”  Roger looked indignantly in at his daughter.

“What has happened?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Edith replied.  “They didn’t seem to need me.  They made it rather plain, in fact.  Another quarrel, I presume.  She came into the house like a whirlwind, asked at once for Deborah and flew up to Deborah’s room.”

“Pshaw!” Roger heavily mounted the stairs.  He at least did not feel like flying.  A whirlwind, eh—­a nice evening ahead!

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in her room upstairs Deborah sat motionless, sternly holding her feelings down, while in a tone now kindly but more often full of a sharp dismay, she threw out question after question to Laura who was walking the floor in a quick, feverish sort of way, with gestures half hysterical, her voice bursting with emotions of mingled fright and rage.

“No, this time it’s divorce!” she declared, at the end of her first outburst, in which she had told in fragments of her husband’s double life.  “I’ve stood it long enough!  I’m through!”

“You mean you don’t care for him,” Deborah said.  She was fighting for time to think it out.  “You want a divorce.  Very well, Laura dear—­but how do you think you are going to get it?  The laws are rather strict in this state.  They allow but one cause.  Have you any proofs?”

“No, I haven’t—­but I don’t need any proofs!  He wants it as badly as I do!  Wait—­I’ll give you his very words!” Laura’s face grew white with fury.  “’It’s entirely up to you, Sweetie’—­the beast!—­’You can have any kind of divorce you like.  You can let me bring suit on the quiet or you can try to fight me in court, climb up into the witness chair in front of the reporters and tell them all about yourself!’”

“Your husband is to bring suit against you?” Deborah’s voice was loud and harsh.  “For God’s sake, Laura, what do you mean?”

“Mean?  I mean that he has proofs!  He has used a detective, the mean little cur, and he’s treating me like the dirt under his feet!  Just as though it were one thing for a man, and another—­quite—­for a woman!  He even had the nerve to be mad, to get on a high horse, call me names!  Turn me!—­turn me out on the street!” Deborah winced as though from a blow.  “Oh, it was funny, funny!” Laura was almost sobbing now.

“Stop, this minute!” Deborah said.  “You say that you’ve been doing—­what he has?” she demanded.