“Big Jim” Dougherty had a wife, but he did not wear a button portrait of her upon his lapel.  He had a home in one of those brown-stone, iron-railed streets on the west side that look like a recently excavated bowling alley of Pompeii.

To this home of his Mr. Dougherty repaired each night when the hour was so late as to promise no further diversion in the arch domains of sport.  By that time the occupant of the monogamistic harem would be in dreamland, the bulbul silenced and the hour propitious for slumber.

“Big Jim” always arose at twelve, meridian, for breakfast, and soon afterward he would return to the rendezvous of his “crowd.”

He was always vaguely conscious that there was a Mrs. Dougherty.  He would have received without denial the charge that the quiet, neat, comfortable little woman across the table at home was his wife.  In fact, he remembered pretty well that they had been married for nearly four years.  She would often tell him about the cute tricks of Spot, the canary, and the light-haired lady that lived in the window of the flat across the street.

“Big Jim” Dougherty even listened to this conversation of hers sometimes.  He knew that she would have a nice dinner ready for him every evening at seven when he came for it.  She sometimes went to matinees, and she had a talking machine with six dozen records.  Once when her Uncle Amos blew in on a wind from up-state, she went with him to the Eden Musee.  Surely these things were diversions enough for any woman.

One afternoon Mr. Dougherty finished his breakfast, put on his hat and got away fairly for the door.  When his hand was on the knob be heard his wife’s voice.

“Jim,” she said, firmly, “I wish you would take me out to dinner this evening.  It has been three years since you have been outside the door with me.”

“Big Jim” was astounded.  She had never asked anything like this before.  It had the flavour of a totally new proposition.  But he was a game sport.

“All right,” he said.  “You be ready when I come at seven.  None of this ‘wait two minutes till I primp an hour or two’ kind of business, now, Dele.”

“I’ll be ready,” said his wife, calmly.

At seven she descended the stone steps in the Pompeian bowling alley at the side of “Big Jim” Dougherty.  She wore a dinner gown made of a stuff that the spiders must have woven, and of a color that a twilight sky must have contributed.  A light coat with many admirably unnecessary capes and adorably inutile ribbons floated downward from her shoulders.  Fine feathers do make fine birds; and the only reproach in the saying is for the man who refuses to give up his earnings to the ostrich-tip industry.

“Big Jim” Dougherty was troubled.  There was a being at his side whom he did not know.  He thought of the sober-hued plumage that this bird of paradise was accustomed to wear in her cage, and this winged revelation puzzled him.  In some way she reminded him of the Delia Cullen that he had married four years before.  Shyly and rather awkwardly he stalked at her right hand.