“She's an angel--and I'm a beast!” groaned Manley, with the exaggerated self-abasement which so frequently follows close upon the heels of intoxication. “She'll never forgive a thing like that--the best thing I can do is to blow my brains out!” “Like Walt. And have your picture enlarged and put in a gold frame, and hubby number two learning his morals from your awful example,” elaborated Kent, in much the same tone he had employed when Val, only the day before, had rashly expressed a wish for a speedy death. Manley sat up straighter and sent a look of resentment toward the man who bantered when he should have sympathized. “It's all a big joke with you, of course,” he flared weakly. “You're not married--to a perfect woman; a woman who never did anything wrong in her life, and can't understand how anybody should want to, and can't forgive him when he does. She expects a man to be a saint. Why, I don't even smoke in the house--and she doesn't dream I'd ever swear, under any circumstances. “Why, Kent, a fellow's _got_ to go to town and turn himself loose sometimes, when he lives in a rarified atmosphere of refined morality, and listens to Songs Without Words and weepy classics on the violin, and never a thing to make your feet tingle. She doesn't believe in public dances, either. Nor cards. She reads 'The Ring and the Book' evenings, and wants to discuss it and read passages of it to me. I used to take some interest in those things, and she doesn't seem to see I've changed. Why, hang it, Kent, Cold Spring Coulee's no place for Browning--he doesn't fit in. All that sort of thing is a thousand miles behind me--and I've got to--” He stopped short and brooded, his eyes upon the dank sawdust at his feet. “I'm a beast,” he repeated rather lugubriously. “She's an angel--an Eastern-bred angel. And let me tell you, Kent, all that's pretty hard to live up to!” Kent looked down at him meditatively, wondering if there was not a good deal of truth and justice in Manley's argument. But his sympathies had already gone to the other side, and Kent was not the man to make an emotional pendulum of himself. “Well, what you going to do about it?” he asked, after a short silence. For answer Manley rose to his feet with a certain air of determination, which flamed up oddly above his general weakness, like the last sputter of a candle burned down. “I'm going over and take my medicine--face the music,” he said almost sullenly, “She's too good for me--I always knew it. And I haven't treated her right--I've left her out there alone too much. But she wouldn't come to town with me--she said she couldn't endure the sight of it. What could I do? _I_ couldn't stay out there all the time; there were times when I had to come. She didn't seem to mind staying alone. She never objected. She was always sweet sad good-natured--and shut up inside of herself. She just gives you what she pleases of her mind, and the rest she hides--”