“Osborn, you’re a liar.  Your wife knows as well as I do that she could divorce you to-morrow.”

“But Miss Dates would be a fool, which I am sure she is not,” said the wife’s pretty voice, “if she imagines I would do it.”

Husband and wife looked at each other across the table, and the question in the eyes of one, the answer in the eyes of the other, were naked and unashamed.  They could be read by the woman between them.  And regardless of her presence, they asked and answered each other in eager words.

“Marie, do you want me?”

“Yes; I want you.”

Osborn turned to Roselle Dates.  He turned to her as to something tiresome, hindering the true business of the hour.  “Roselle,” he said crisply, “my wife wishes to lunch with me alone.  Will you go; or shall we?”

“I’ll go,” she replied very slowly, “but I shall expect some sort of explanation.”

He stood up and put on her coat and their eyes were almost level, looking right into each other’s.

“An explanation?  You won’t get it,” he whispered back.

“It’s due to me.  You’re a rotter.”

“There’s nothing due to you,” he replied with a sudden air of relief at the discovery.

An abounding idea of happiness to come filled him as he moved beside Roselle down the crowded restaurant.  As they went he said:  “It’s all over; I’m a fool no longer.  You understand there’s only one woman in the world for me and that’s my wife.  And since she has some use for me again ...  Good-bye!”

He held out his hand, but she refused it angrily.  She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to the table they had left.

There were real things; and trash; well defined.

“Taxi!” he said in a ringing voice to the commissionaire.

“Where are you going, Roselle?”

“Home,” she answered venomously.

He put her in, paid the driver and gave the direction.  “I’m sorry you had not quite finished your lunch,” he said perfunctorily, looking in.

She bit her lip and averted her head; but she was aware, in spite of her refusal to see, or hear, or speak to him, that before her cab had started he was returning back with a swift step into the restaurant.

There sat the wife who held all the cards—­as wives do if they will only play them aright.  She was not smiling, nor exultant, nor blatant over it, but triumph was in every line of her as she waited there, slender, lovely, and sartorially exquisite.  From the tip of her shoe to the crown of her hat she was conquest.

He sat down, thinking over words to say, and she looked at him critically, yet eagerly, and waited for him to speak.

He cleared his throat.