"Look here, Will, you mustn't make me laugh like that! You know I used to think I understood human nature, but I never started with that woman. I did live at her expense,--I had to,--and she stood for it until I got to hanging round the saloons too much. She used to pay my dues in the club, damned if she didn't, until I got fired for too much poker in the chamber over the gate. I must say she was a good sport: as a fair-minded man, I've got to admit that. And she swung the lash over me--never laid it on, but made it sizz--whistle--till I'd duck and sniffle; and she did exactly what she pleased without caring a damn whether I liked it or not! By George, I knew she was a wonder when I took her off Kirkwood's hands, but she wasn't wonderful in just the way I thought she'd be. That was where the joke came in. And she made people like her; she could do that; and she got on, so that wherever she could go without me she was welcome. That was after people got sorry for her because she was hooked up to me; but most of 'em, I guess, liked her on her own account. A queer development, Will. For the past five years I've just been a piece of furniture, to be dusted and moved occasionally like an old rocking-chair that gets into a house, nobody knows exactly how, and is shoved around, trying corners where it won't be noticed much, until it winds up in the garret. But after all the corners had been tried,--she didn't have any garret; we lived mostly in hotels and flats,--I was gradually worked out on the second-hand man's wagon, and here I am." "She kept her money, then?" asked William with assumed indifference. "Will," said Jack with a mockingly confidential air, leaning forward on the table, "after the first two or three years I never knew whether she had a cent or not, that's the straight of it. Considering that she had thrown away her reputation like an old shoe just for me, and that we lived along under the same roof, that was the most astonishing thing of all. She began by handing me out a hundred now and then when I was broke; then it dropped to ten, and then it got down to a dollar a week,--humiliating, Will, considering that I had given up my interest in the ancient and honorable firm of Montgomery & Holton, Bankers, just for her! But when she shook me for good, I'm damned if she didn't give me a clean thousand just as a consolation prize." William was more interested in this phase of the relationship than in anything that had gone before. He was aware of the local belief that Jack had thrown away his wife's share of her father's estate in his real estate speculations in Seattle and that Amzi supported her dutifully by a regular allowance; in fact, the three sisters had encouraged this impression by characteristic insinuations. "What's become of her? Where is she now?"