"Oh, Lois!" He spoke as though surprised that she should be chosen for particular attention, and his lip curled scornfully. "When a man goes wrong, Will, he pays for it. Take it from me that that's one gospel truth that I've proved to my entire satisfaction. It's queer, Will, how soon a bonfire burns out--the bigger the fire the quicker it goes. I went plum crazy about that girl. She'd married the one particular man on earth who was least likely to make her happy. He bored her. And I guess her baby bored her, too,--she wasn't a domestic animal,--no pussy cat to sit by the fire and play with the baby and have hubby's slippers toasting when he came home to supper. And I had time to play with her; I wasn't so intellectual as Tom, but my nature was a damned sight more sympathetic. It looked as though we had been made for each other, and I was fooled into thinking so. And I was bored myself--this silly little town, with nothing to hold anybody. Lois and I were made for a bigger world--at least we thought so: and by Jove, it was funny how we fooled each other--it was altogether too damned funny!" "I'm glad you take a humorous view of it," replied William coldly. "Not satisfied with disgracing the family, you come back to rub it in. Where did you leave the woman? I suppose you've chucked her--the usual way." Jack threw back his head and laughed. "Well, I like that! You don't know what I had to put up with! She made me suffer, I can tell you! I don't believe she'd deny herself that she made it damned uncomfortable for me. She liked to spend money, for one thing, and I couldn't make it fast enough; and she wanted to mingle with the rich and gay, and our story had followed us, and it's funny, Will, what a lot of old-fashioned, stupid, Thursday-night-prayer-meeting and the-pastor-in-to-tea morality there is left in this fool world! It cut Lois up a good deal, being snubbed by people she wanted to stand well with. It gave me a jolt to find that I wasn't all-sufficient for her after all; which hurt some when we'd decided we could be happy alone together in the woods for the rest of our days. It's a long story, and I'm not going to talk about it. With the money I took away from here I began monkeying with real estate; it didn't seem that anybody out there could lose just then: but I was a bad guesser. In five years I had played in all my chips, and had to sneak around office buildings trying to sell life insurance, which wasn't dignified nor becoming in a member of the haughty house of Holton." "Sam told me a different story. Why don't you tell the truth if you talk about it at all? You gambled and lost your money--that's what happened; and real estate speculation was only a side line. But Lois had money; I suppose you played that away, too. Sam never seemed quite clear about your relations with her."