Lawrence flung the gray wrap over their clasped hands. He began to talk gaily. Suddenly he ceased speaking. Group after group had gone past them as they sat there, but now a man in white pantaloons, with a blue coat over a white rowing jersey, came walking over the battery. This man was middle-aged, swarthy, with a heavy black, carefully kept beard, and black eyes with a puffiness beneath them. He came up hat in hand. "Of course I know I'm _de trop_, Mrs. Lawrence," he said, easily; "but then a man may decide to be even that for the sake of a word with you." He nodded at Lawrence, who bowed with extreme distance in return, and who altogether had a look, as his wife informed him later, of wishing to rise and throw this newcomer into the sea. "Only you'd have had a terrible armful, dear," she concluded, with a laugh and a glint of the eyes. Having spoken thus, Mr. Meramble calmly sat down on the other side of Mrs. Lawrence and asked her if she didn't think he had rowed by in excellent form. Whereupon they entered into a brisk talk about rowing and yacht-racing and kindred topics. Lawrence grew more and more glum, and at last rose and said he believed he would go back to the Ponce. To his surprise, Prudence also rose. "Wait a moment, dear," she said, sweetly, "and I'll go with you." And of course Meramble rose, and refrained from accompanying them. "I wish you were not quite such a donkey, Rodney," said Prudence, as the two walked away. "Thanks for your good wish." Lawrence had a sense of suffocation upon him. This sense was caused by his now having fully decided in his own mind that his wife used just such tones and just such glances with other men as she had used--nay, as she still used--with him. This conviction, he felt, was reached rather soon after his marriage, and he was in the first acute suffering of the full discovery which had been slowly, like a dull pain, coming to his consciousness. "I don't mean that you are habitually a donkey," she went on, as they strolled through the Plaza, "but only occasionally, and, of course, just when you particularly ought not to be." Here the speaker bowed to an acquaintance, and Lawrence hurriedly raised his hat without seeing whom they had met. "Just now," she continued, "you ought to have been especially sweet to Mr. Meramble." "Why? Because the creature is a blackguard and a male flirt?" Prudence raised her brows again. But she touched her husband's sleeve, and her glance tried to meet his. "Because," she answered, "he is one of those animals who like to make husbands jealous." Lawrence turned towards his wife with a restrained ferocity. "And you would let him?" he asked, speaking in a whisper lest he should speak too loud. Prudence threw back her head and laughed; the merry sound made people near turn and look at her. "Good heavens!" muttered Lawrence under his breath, "what a thing it is to be a woman!"