I put my new project on the ground that though we were dissevered by our situation, there was no occasion for our being out of touch with the world of emotion, not, at least, so long as we had admission to it through the drama; and it wasn't in me to imagine that the world I prefigured to them under those terms was one by their standards never to be kept sufficiently at a distance. Mrs. Miller put the case for most of them with the suggestion thrown out guardedly that she didn't "know as she held with plays for church members"; she was a large, tasteless woman, whose husband kept the lumber yard and derived from it an extensive air of being in touch with the world's occupations. "And I don't know," she went on relentlessly, "that I ever see any good come of play acting to them that practise it." Mrs. Ross, determined to live up to her two lumps, came forward gallantly with: "Oh, but, Mrs. Miller, when our dear Mrs. Bettersworth----" "That's what I was thinking of," Mrs. Miller put it over her. "Well for my part," declared Mrs. Dinkelspiel, with the air of not caring who knew it, "I don't want my girls to sell tickets or anything; it makes 'em too forward." Mrs. Harvey, whose husband was in hardware, began to tell discursively about a perfectly lovely entertainment they had had in Newton Centre for the missionary society, which Mrs. Miller took exception to on the ground of its frivolity. "I don't know," she maintained, "if the Lord's work ain't hindered by them sort of comicalities as much as it's helped." I am not sure where this discussion mightn't have landed us if the general attention had not been distracted just then by my husband, an hour before his time, coming through the front gate and up the walk. He had evidently forgotten my tea party, for he came straight to me, and backed away precipitately through the portières as soon as he saw the assembled ladies sitting about the wall. It was not that which disturbed us; any Higgleston male would have done the same, but it was plain in the brief glimpse we had of him that he looked white and stricken. A little later we heard him in the back of the house making ambiguous noises such as not one of my guests could fail to understand as the precursor of a domestic crisis. I could see the little flutter of uneasiness which passed over them, between their sense of its demanding my immediate attention and the fear of leaving before the expressed time. Fortunately the stroke of five released them. The door was hardly shut on the last silk skirt when I ran out and found him staring out of the kitchen window. "Well?" I questioned. "I thought they would never go," he protested. "Come in here." He led the way to the living room as if somehow he found it more appropriate to the gravity of what he had to impart, and yet failed to make a beginning with his news. He shut the door and leaned against it with his hands behind him for support. "Has anything happened?"