“I really have no idea!” Miss Saunders said.

“You may be sure she knew just where to go, a creature like that!” old Mrs. Thayer said wisely.  “How de do, Peter, Auntie here?” she called to a smiling man who went by.

“Oh, she wouldn’t go utterly bad,” Julia protested; “you can’t tell, she may have been decent for years.  It may have been years ago—­”

“Still, me dear,” old Mrs. Thayer said comfortably, “one doesn’t like the idea—­one can’t overlook that, ye know.”

“Of course, it’s too bad,” Miss Saunders added briskly, “and it’s a great pity, and things ought to be different from what they are, and all that; but at the same time you couldn’t have a girl like that in the house, now could you?”

“Oh, yes, I could!” said Julia, scarlet cheeked, “I was just thinking how glad I would be to give her a trial!”

She stopped because Jim, very handsome in evening dress and with his pretty partner beside him, had come up to them.

“Tired, dear?” Jim said, smiling approval of the little figure in white lace, and the earnest eyes under loosened bright hair.

“Just about time you came up, Jim!” Ella Saunders said cheerfully, “here’s your wife championing the cause of unfortunate girls—­she wouldn’t care what they’d done, she’d take them right into her home!”

“And very sweet and nice of her,” Mrs. Thayer observed, with a consolatory pat on Julia’s arm, “only it isn’t quite practical, me dear, is it, Jim?”

“Julia’d like to take in every cat and dog and beggar and newsboy she sees,” said Jim, with his bright smile.  But Julia knew he was not pleased.  “Do you want to come speak to Mother and the girls, dear, before I take you home?” he added, offering his arm.  Julia stood up and said her good-nights, and crossed the room, a slender and most captivating little figure, at his side.  It was not until she was bundled into furs and in the motor car that she could say, with an appealing hand on his arm: 

“Don’t blame me, Jimmy.  I didn’t start that topic.  Miss Saunders happened to tell of a poor girl who—­”

“I don’t care to discuss it,” Jim said, removing her hand by the faintest gesture of withdrawing.

Julia sighed and was silent.  The limousine ran smoothly past one lighted corner after another; turned into Van Ness Avenue.  After a while she said, a little indignation burning through her quiet tone: 

“I’ve said I was not responsible for the conversation, Jim.  And it seems to me merely childish in you to let a casual remark affect you in this way!”

“All right, then, I’m childish!” Jim said grimly, folding his arms as he leaned back in his seat.

Julia sighed again.  Presently Jim burst out: 

“I’m affected by a casual remark, yes, I admit it.  But my God, doesn’t it mean anything to you that I have my pride, that when I think of my wife I want to feel that she is more perfect in every way—­in every way—­than all the other women in the world?” He stopped, breathing hard, and resumed, a little less violently:  “All I ask is, Julia, that you let such subjects alone.  You’re not called upon to defend such girls!  Surely that’s not too much to ask!”