It was a glorious afternoon, a rare April day, and even the ornate lobby of the Park Avenue apartment house permitted an occasional beam of sun to enter. After preliminary negotiations with the doorman, the telephone operator, and the elevator guards, I was permitted to ascend to the fourteenth story, where a butler conducted me from the reception-hall to the high-ceilinged drawing-room. There were five enormous windows, and every shade was drawn, so that you had the impression of sitting in one of those softly-carpeted motion picture palaces. Later I was to discover that Mrs. Breese flowered only in dim rooms, with shades and curtains drawn, and her idea of human habitation was in harmony with that of the designers of the motion picture temples. She carried this atmosphere wherever she went, as people will. She made a dramatic entrance into the room after keeping me waiting fully fifteen minutes, and I could hear her voice behind the grilled door, a peculiarly harsh voice that trilled, curiously enough, and chattered. “_SO_ sorry to keep you waiting,” the voice said before I saw her, and then a tall and full-bosomed figure in jade green swept before me. Even in the faint light I could see she was a blonde, with somewhat faded blue eyes. It took no discerning observer to note that the masseur and the hairdresser had preceded me, and that the ladies’ maid had done her daily stint. The air filled not unpleasantly with a rare perfume, and then, with a gracious gesture to me, the lady seated herself, poised for the ordeal. But if I expected a reticent, an embarrassment quite natural under the circumstances, I was quickly disillusioned. Despite newspaper training, I was bred in the school that regards one’s private life as unfit for public discussion. I expected to sympathize with her on the unfortunate circumstances that compelled me to intrude. But she made that quite unnecessary, in the harsh trilling voice that I shall never forget. “My husband,” she said, “has a Napoleonic complex. He thinks he can dominate me.” She paused. “He can’t.” I readily believed that, although I had never met Mr. Breese. I might explain that Mrs. Breese had but recently discovered psychoanalysts, and the jargon of their trade was always on the tip of her tongue.