One day when the young Mathers had been married for about a year, Jaqueline walked into the rooms of the hardware brokerage which her husband carried on with more than average success. At the open door of the inner office she stopped and said: "Oh, excuse me--" She had interrupted an apparently trivial yet somehow intriguing scene. A young man named Bronson whom she knew slightly was standing with her husband; the latter had risen from his desk. Bronson seized her husband's hand and shook it earnestly--something more than earnestly. When they heard Jaqueline's step in the doorway both men turned and Jaqueline saw that Bronson's eyes were red. A moment later he came out, passing her with a somewhat embarrassed "How do you do?" She walked into her husband's office. "What was Ed Bronson doing here?" she demanded curiously, and at once. Jim Mather smiled at her, half shutting his gray eyes, and drew her quietly to a sitting position on his desk. "He just dropped in for a minute," he answered easily. "How's everything at home?" "All right." She looked at him with curiosity. "What did he want?" she insisted. "Oh, he just wanted to see me about something." "What?" "Oh, just something. Business." "Why were his eyes red?" "Were they?" He looked at her innocently, and then suddenly they both began to laugh. Jaqueline rose and walked around the desk and plumped down into his swivel chair. "You might as well tell me," she announced cheerfully, "because I'm going to stay right here till you do." "Well--" he hesitated, frowning. "He wanted me to do him a little favor." Then Jaqueline understood, or rather her mind leaped half accidentally to the truth. "Oh." Her voice tightened a little. "You've been lending him some money." "Only a little." "How much?" "Only three hundred." "_Only_ three hundred." The voice was of the texture of Bessemer cooled. "How much do we spend a month, Jim?" "Why--why, about five or six hundred, I guess." He shifted uneasily. "Listen, Jack. Bronson'll pay that back. He's in a little trouble. He's made a mistake about a girl out in Woodmere----" "And he knows you're famous for being an easy mark, so he comes to you," interrupted Jaqueline. "No." He denied this formally. "Don't you suppose I could use that three hundred dollars?" she demanded. "How about that trip to New York we couldn't afford last November?" The lingering smile faded from Mather's face. He went over and shut the door to the outer office. "Listen, Jack," he began, "you don't understand this. Bronson's one of the men I eat lunch with almost every day. We used to play together when we were kids, we went to school together. Don't you see that I'm just the person he'd be right to come to in trouble? And that's just why I couldn't refuse." Jaqueline gave her shoulders a twist as if to shake off this reasoning.