There was no doubt, though, that things were now reaching such a state that there would have to be a change. He couldn’t stand this any longer. Women like Idelle were menaces, really, and shouldn’t be tolerated. Most men wouldn’t stand for her, although he had. But why? Why? Well, because he loved her, that was why, and you couldn’t explain love. And the other reason—the worst of all—was the dread he had been suffering of late years of being left alone again if she left him. Alone! It was a terrible feeling, this fear of being left alone in the future, and especially when you were so drawn to some one who, whatever her faults, could make you idyllically happy if she only would. Lord, how peculiar these love passions of people were, anyhow! How they swayed one! Tortured one! Here he was haunted all the time now by the knowledge that he would be miserable if she left him, and that he needed some one like her to make him happy, a cheerful and agreeable beauty when she chose to be, fascinating even when she was not, and yet knowing that he would have to learn to endure to be alone if ever he was to get the strength to force her to better ways. Why couldn’t he? Or why couldn’t she settle down and be decent once? Well, he would have to face this out with her, once and for all now. He wasn’t going to stand for her carrying on in this fashion. She must sober down. She had had her way long enough now, by God! He just wasn’t going to pose as her husband and be a shield for her any longer! No sir, by George. _Only thirty-eight miles more! If she were not there now, as she promised!_ Beginning to-day she would have to give him a decent deal or he would leave her. He wouldn’t—he couldn’t—stand for it any longer. Think of that last time he had come on from K——, just as he was coming to-day, and she had agreed to be at home—because he had made her promise before going that she would—and then, by George, when he got off the train and walked into the Brandingham with Arbuthnot to telephone, having just told Arbuthnot that he expected to find her out at the house, wasn’t she there with young Keene and four or five others, drinking and dancing? “Why, there’s your wife now, Garrison,” Arbuthnot had laughingly jested, and he had had to turn it all off with that “Oh, yes, that’s right! I forgot! She was to meet me here. How stupid of me!” Why hadn’t he made a scene then? Why hadn’t he broken things up then? Because he was a blank-blanked fool, that’s why, allowing her to pull him around by the nose and do as she pleased! Love, that’s why! He was a damned fool for loving her as much as he did, and in the face of all he knew! _Nearing Shively! Colonel Brandt’s stock-farm! Home soon now! That little town in the distance, no connection with the railroad at all!_