Bartley rose and took a turn about the room, pulling down his waistcoat and contemplating its outward slope with a smile. “Oh, I've got more friends than I can shake a stick at. And with pleasure at the helm, goodness is a drug in the market,--if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor. Look here, Marcia,” he added, severely. “If you like the Hallecks, all well and good; I sha'n't interfere with you; but they bore me. I outgrew Ben Halleck years ago. He's duller than death. As for the old people, there's no harm in them,--though _they're_ bores, too,--nor in the old girls; but Olive Halleck doesn't treat me decently. I suppose that just suits you: I've noticed that you never like the women that _do_ treat me decently.” “They don't treat _me_ decently!” retorted Marcia. “Oh, Miss Kingsbury treated you very well that night. She couldn't imagine your being jealous of her politeness to me.” Marcia's temper fired at his treacherous recurrence to a grievance which he had once so sacredly and sweetly ignored. “If you wish to take up bygones, why don't you go back to Hannah Morrison at once? She treated you even better than Miss Kingsbury.” “I should have been very willing to do that,” said Bartley, “but I thought it might remind you of a disagreeable little episode in your own life, when you flung me away, and had to go down on your knees to pick me up again.” These thrusts which they dealt each other in their quarrels, however blind and misdirected, always reached their hearts: it was the wicked will that hurt, rather than the words. Marcia rose, bleeding inwardly, and her husband felt the remorse of a man who gets the best of it in such an encounter. “Oh, I'm sorry I said that, Marcia! I didn't mean it; indeed I--” She disdained to heed him, as she swept out of the room, and up the stairs; and his anger flamed out again. “I give you fair warning,” he called after her, “not to try that trick of locking the door, or I will smash it in.” Her answer was to turn the key in the door with a click which he could not fail to hear.