"Well, if such a woman asks for Mrs. Fosdick--she's my husband's first wife--but of course that doesn't interest you." "No'm--yes'm." "If she comes--tell her--tell her--oh, what shall we tell her?" The porter rubbed his thick skull: "Lemme see--we might say you--I tell you what we'll tell her: we'll tell her you took the train for New York; and if she runs mighty fast she can just about ketch it." "Fine, fine!" And she rewarded his genius with another coin. "And, porter." He had not budged. "Porter, if a very handsome man with luscious eyes and a soulful smile asks for me----" "I'll th'ow him off the train!" "Oh, no--no!--that's my husband--my present husband. You may let him in. Now is it all perfectly clear, porter?" "Oh, yassum, clear as clear." Thus guaranteed she entered the stateroom, leaving the porter alone with his problem. He tried to work it out in a semi-audible mumble: "Lemme see! If your present husband's absent wife gits on bode disguised as a handsome hideous woman I'm to throw him--her--off the train and let her--him--come in--oh, yassum, you may rely on me." He bowed and held out his hand again. But she was gone. He shuffled on into the car. He had hardly left the little space before the stateroom when a handsome man with luscious eyes, but without any smile at all, came slinking along the corridor and tapped cautiously on the door. Silence alone answered him at first, then when he had rapped again, he heard a muffled: "Go away. I'm not in." He put his lips close and softly called: "Edith!" At this Sesame the door opened a trifle, but when he tried to enter, a hand thrust him back and a voice again warned him off. "You musn't come in." "But I'm your husband." "That's just why you musn't come in." The door opened a little wider to give him a view of a downcast beauty moaning: "Oh, Arthur, I'm so afraid." "Afraid?" he sniffed. "With your husband here?" "That's the trouble, Arthur. What if your former wife should find us together?" "But she and I are divorced." "In some states, yes--but other states don't acknowledge the divorce. That former wife of yours is a fiend to pursue us this way." "She's no worse than your former husband. He's pursuing us, too. My divorce was as good as yours, my dear." "Yes, and no better." The angels looking on might have judged from the ready tempers of the newly married and not entirely unmarried twain that their new alliance promised to be as exciting as their previous estates. Perhaps the man subtly felt the presence of those eternal eavesdroppers, for he tried to end the love-duel in the corridor with an appeasing caress and a tender appeal: "But let's not start our honeymoon with a quarrel." His partial wife returned the caress and tried to explain: "I'm not quarreling with you, dear heart, but with the horrid divorce laws. Why, oh, why did we ever interfere with them?" He made a brave effort with: "We ended two unhappy marriages, Edith, to make one happy one."