He never attended the theatre with her, his preference being for vaudeville or a screaming musical comedy, for both of which abnormalities she had a profound contempt. She saw only the "best plays" herself, her choice being guided not so much by newspaper approval as by length of run. It must be confessed that in the eight or nine years of her comparative emancipation from the grinding duties of the home she had learned a good deal of life from the plays she saw. On the whole, however, she preferred sound American drama, particularly when it dealt with Society; for the advanced (or decadent?) pictures of life as presented in the imported drama, she had only a mild contempt; her first curiosity satisfied, she thanked God that she was a plain American. Such was Mrs. Balfame when she made up her mind to remove David Balfame, superfluous husband. She was quite content to reign in Elsinore, to live out her life there, but as a dignified and irreproachable and well-to-do widow. Divorce being out of the question, there was but one way to get rid of him: his years were but forty-four, and although he "blew up" with increasing frequency, to use his own choice vernacular, he was as healthy as an ox, and the town drunkard was rising eighty. Mrs. Balfame's friend, Dr. Anna Steuer, was now replying to the lady from New York. After reminding the Club that the President of the United States had requested his docile subjects to curb their passions and flaunt their neutrality, Dr. Steuer proceeded to demolish the anti-German attitude of the guests by reciting the long list of industrial, economic and scientific contributions to civilisation which had distinguished the German Empire since the federation of its states. Dr. Steuer was of Dutch descent, and her gifts were not forensic, but the key-note of her character was an intense and passionate loyalty. She had spent some of the most impressionable years of her life in the German clinics, and she cherished a romantic affection for a country whose natural and historic beauties no man will deny. She had steadfastly refused to read the "other side," pinning her faith to all that was best in the country of her youthful dreams. In consequence, her discourse, while informing, was somewhat beside the point; and had it not been for the deep love borne her by almost every one present, there would have been a polite but firm demand to give place. Mrs. Balfame was smiling encouragement when her musings took a sudden and arbitrary twist. Being a person who never acted on impulse, her decisions, after due processes of thought, were commonly irrevocable. The moment she had made up her mind to pass her husband on, she had committed herself to the act; and, even before Dr. Anna Steuer had claimed her superficial attention, had already erected the question, How?