Your letter has your characteristic touch of cruelty. We may as well part now and be done with it. But the children you cannot have. Remember that I relinquish none of my rights on this point. I demand that you surrender Edith at once and I will communicate with you later about the custody of Harold until such time as he is old enough to come to me. Putney Congdon. The cautious hint of the taxi driver that domestic difficulties were responsible for the breaking up of the Congdon household found here a painful corroboration. He chivalrously took sides at once with the unhappy Alice; no matter how shrewish the absconding wife might be, only a brute of a husband would fling such a message at her head. Archie hated discord; the very thought of it was abhorrent. He had never had a care in his life beyond his health, and quarrels of every sort he left to underbred people with evil tempers. Here was a furious lunatic telegraphing his wife of the severance of the most sacred of ties and demanding the immediate transfer of one child to his possession and relinquishing only temporarily the custody of the other, presumably younger and the lawful owner of the doll he had picked up on the stair landing. He now visualized the whole scene that followed upon the receipt of the telegram; the hurried, tearful packing, the bewildered children, the panic-struck servants rushing about obeying the orders of a hysterical mistress. The more he thought of it the warmer became his defensive attitude toward the unknown Alice. She had met the situation like a woman of quick decisions,--perhaps she was a little too unyielding and this had caused the rupture; but no man worthy to be called a gentleman would commit to the wires so heartless a message directed at the mother of his children. His attention had been arrested several times by a photograph of a young girl, of eleven or twelve, set in a silver frame on the living-room table, whom he assumed to be the Edith mentioned in the telegram. She was a lovely child, with a wealth of hair falling about her shoulders, and roguish eyes that looked at him teasingly. It was a thoroughly feminine face with an unusual perfection of line. Very likely the child was the reembodiment of her mother who must, he thought, be a very handsome woman indeed. His resentment hardened against the husband and father, the author of the brutal message that disposed of his marital obligations as coolly as though he had been canceling an order for a carload of merchandise, as he held up the picture for the joy of meeting the gaze of the merry eyes.