He lifted his glass until he felt its touch against his lips and gradually set it down. "Why, Jim, in six years I've loved her so that I've never done anything I wanted to do, gone anywhere I wanted to go, drank anything I've wanted to drink, saw anything I wanted to see, wore anything I wanted to wear, smoked anything I wanted to smoke, read anything I wanted to read, or dined any one I wanted to dine! Jim, it certainly has been a _domestic_ time!" "Good God! I can't believe it!" ejaculated De Gollyer, too astounded to indulge his sense of humor. All at once a little fury seemed to seize Lightbody. His voice rose and his gestures became indignant. "Married! I've been married to a policeman. Why, Jim, do you know what I've spent on myself, really spent? Not two thousand, not one thousand, not five hundred dollars a year. I've been poorer than my own clerk. I'd hate to tell you what I paid for cigars and whisky. Everything went to her, everything! And Jim--" he turned suddenly with a significant glance--"such a temper!" "A temper? No, impossible, not that!" "Not violent--oh, no--but firm--smiling, you know, but irresistible." He drew a long breath charged with bitter memories and said between his teeth, rebelling: "I always agreed." "Can it be? Is it possible?" commented De Gollyer, carefully mastering his expression. Lightbody, on the new subject of his wrongs, now began to explode with wrath. "And there's one thing more--one thing that hurts! You know what she eloped in? She eloped in a hat, a big red hat, three white feathers--one hundred and seventy-five dollars. I gave up a winter suit to get it." He strode over to the grotesquely large hat-box on the slender table, and struck it with his fist. "Came this morning. Jim, she waited for that hat! Now, that isn't right! That isn't delicate!" "No, by Jove, it certainly isn't delicate!" "Domesticity! Ha!" At the moment, with only the long vision of petty tyranny before him, he could have caught her up in his hands and strangled her. "Domesticity! I've had all I want of domesticity!" Suddenly the eternal fear awakening in him, he turned and commanded authoritatively: "Never tell!" "Never!" De Gollyer, at forty-two, showed a responsive face, invincibly, gravely sympathetic, patiently awaiting his climax, knowing that nothing is so cumulatively dangerous as confession. Lightbody took up his glass and again approached it to his lips, frowning at the thought of what he had revealed. All at once a fresh impulse caught him, he put down his glass untasted, blurting out: "Do you want to know one thing more? Do you want to know the truth, the real truth?" "Gracious heavens, there is something more?" "I never married her--never in God's world!" He ceased and suddenly, not to be denied, the past ranged itself before him in its stark verity. "She married me!" "Is it possible?" "She did!" What had been an impulse suddenly became a certainty.