He did the only thing possible to a man calling himself a gentleman, when baited to desperation in a public place by a woman who passes for a lady—he lifted his hat silently and pulled the strap to stop the car. Other passengers than Miss Marvel marked the dark face and blazing eyes, and curious regards wandered back to the offender, smiling to herself at this new proof of her ability to, in her favorite phrase, “drive a poisoned needle under a man’s fifth rib.” “_Great Women Married To Small Men!_” The most offensive count in the unanswered indictment seemed to be flung after him by the shrieking March wind. Until this moment of intensest exasperation he had never consciously compared himself mentally with his wife. That spiritually she was purer and better he was ever ready to admit. The gallant alacrity with which men yield the palm of virtue and piety to women may be due to the candor of real greatness, but a keen student of human contrarieties is excusable for likening it, sometimes, to the ostentatious generosity of the child who surrenders to a playfellow the wholesome “cookey,” while he holds fast to the plum cake for his own delectation. “Great” and “Small” were explicit terms that threw our hero upon the hostile-defensive. Agnes was a pearl among women, as good, true, and sweet as any man need covet for a lifelong companion. She kept his house well and his home bright, her sympathies were ready, her love was poured out upon him in unstinted measure, she studied his tastes, humored his few foibles, in brief, filled his life, or so much of it as she could reach, most satisfactorily. Her mind was fairly stocked with miscellaneous information; she had remarkable facility in composition and graceful fancies, and, above all, the happy knack of saying, in a telling way, things people cared to hear. Being in “the literary ring,” she had secured a respectable audience, and, being a tactful woman, she had kept it. “Great,” she was not, in any sense of the word, except according to the perverted standard of the “Club” gang, the mutual-admiration circle, with whom every poetaster was a Browning, and the writer of turgid essays a Carlyle or Emerson. He gave a scornful snort in repeating the adjective. Agnes would be the first to deprecate the application of it to herself. Yet—if she had not invited the commendation of the _Précieuses ridicules_—had her name never been bandied from mouth to mouth in public, the antithetical “small” had never been fitted to him. Husband and wife were in false positions. That was clear—and galling. Almost as clear, and harder to endure, was his conviction that the situation could not be altered for the better. He had not made up his mind to graceful acceptance of the inevitable when he fitted the latchkey in the door of his own house.