"What I chose to tell you. I always do." Was there ever such a trying woman? Jim gulped down another out-of-place oath, and strode noisily up and down the room. He halted at intervals to tell his wife precisely what he thought of her. As the room was isolated, and there was no danger of eavesdropping servants, he indulged in a raised voice and a flow of language which revealed his very limited vocabulary. Leah, with her chin on her knuckles and a round elbow on the sofa cushion, listened unmoved, and looked as though she were having her photograph taken. Jim might have been executing his dance before a graven image for all the emotion she showed. "I've had enough of this," shouted his Grace, maddened by a disdainful silence. "Just you explain, or I'll--why, hang it, I'll forget that I am a gentleman." "It seems to me that you have forgotten." "Oh! You would drive a saint mad." "Lionel is perfectly sane, and he is the sole saint I have met." "Ain't you afraid of my striking you?" demanded Jim's bulldog nature. "Horribly afraid. Can't you see how I tremble?" Poor Jim. He was quite at the end of his resources. Mrs. Penworthy always quailed, when he was in his tantrums; Lady Sandal fought fairly and squarely, slang for slang: but this calm, smiling she-fiend only sat like a dummy, waiting for him to do what she very well knew he would never dare to do. "I wonder if you're a woman," groaned the Duke, returning beaten and baffled and completely exhausted to his chair. "I wonder, too, seeing what you have made me put up with." "Come, now, I've always treated you well." "And other women better." "What other women?" growled Jim, on his guard. "You know very well." "I don't. I know nothin', not even why you're bullyraggin' me. I swear," cried Jim, pathetically, to the ceiling, "that it's uncommonly hard for a cheery chap like me to be tied to a woman who--who--who----" Here words failed him, and he gasped. "Go on. I admire your descriptions of my personality. They are so extraordinarily vivid and true." "Who ain't what she ought to be." Leah's opportunity to break the ice had come, and locking her hands together, she gazed pensively at the Duke, who wriggled uneasily on his seat. "How did you guess, Jim?" "Guess what?" demanded the tormented man. "That I am not what I ought to be." The Duke stared aghast. "Then you ain't t" he shouted. "Dr. Demetrius might say so." "Leah!" He sprang up with clenched fists and his face took on a direfully black expression, which rejoiced her heart. "Jim, I believe--really, I believe that you have some love for me after all." "Oh, hang your fine talk. Demetrius?" "I have kissed him." "He dared to kiss you?" "I dared to kiss him."