"She leaped out of the wind and rain like a storm-elf, and glued her flabby lips to mine, and called me 'Leo.'" "Only that? You'd get used to it with practice," said Roddick, with a grim caricature of cheeriness; "one does to anything. Leo happens to be my own name, if you remember. On my soul, Lomax, I'm jealous! You've stolen one of the kisses that are my exclusive property. Gad, I've a mind to horsewhip you!" Roddick was swung by passion into the very worst of his moods. All through this bitter levity ran a streak of blasphemy--a silent, strenuous blasphemy that was worse than any red-hot flow of words could have been. "But who is she?" said his companion, gravely. "Who is she?" Roddick's laugh burst out as if it had been half-strangled on its way to his mouth. "Innocent friend, who is a woman usually that prowls round one's doorway in the dark, and leaps into one's arms, and--the rest of it? The woman is my wife, of course." Another dead silence. The first of the summer's bees forsook the white arabis that was coming into blossom under the parlour window, and flew into the room. Roddick watched it as it buzzed from wall to wall; then it wanted to escape, and made a dive for the upper window, banging itself against the glass. "It's fun getting in, but how are you going to get out again, little fool?" muttered Roddick. He went to the window and squashed the bee flat against the glass; then returned to his place. "Lomax," he said quietly, "you'd better hear all about it; half a true story is worse than a whole lie. You want to know how this Venus became my cherished wife?" "Oh, drop that tone, old man!" cried Griff. "You don't mean it, and it grinds at one's nerves horribly. Is she really your wife? From what I could see of her in the dark, she seemed too old--any age she might have been----" "She's forty-five, as you are rude enough to call a lady's age in question," said Roddick, still in the same voice. "Drink has delicate fingers, you know, for modelling a woman's face, and she looks older. As to her being my wife, there is no question: she carries her marriage-lines like a talisman next to her breast. She brought the paper out, only a day or two ago, and asked me to gloat over it with her in Darby and Joan fashion; but you can understand that I find it rather difficult nowadays to play the _rôle_ of dutiful husband." Griff had abandoned thought of interruption. It was frightful to listen to the man's cold-blooded rendering of his tragedy, but Roddick must tell his story in his own way, or not at all.