There is indeed a blind spot on Melville Sponley’s moral retina which gives him only a very confused sense of the eighth commandment; but still Jack Dorlin was right in saying that he is not a thorough-going villain. In the score of years past he has done much good; he has, whenever possible, been loyal to his friends, and he has never ceased to hold a genuine affection for his wife; but the struggle has hardened him, has cased him in a shell, and like an old-time man-at-arms in a helmet, he can see only the thing immediately in front of him. Harriet has been in the fight, too, only hers has been the harder part. When she married Melville Sponley, she gave up everything to him, and through all the years she has had no interests but his. She has followed all his campaigns, has praised him and schemed with him, and been ambitious as he himself for his success. Had she borne him any children whose care would have brought a gentler influence into her life, or even if she had been able to find any real companionship among other women, it might have been different. But as it is, in spite of her courage and determination, the strain has been unendurable, and her nerves have been breaking, slowly at first, but more rapidly in these last few months; and as her own ambition has always been that she might help him win, the terror that has dogged her has been that she may prove a drag upon him. So she has told herself every day that she is glad he does not see. To their friends, their home life shows few changes after the twenty years. It was still as comfortable and quiet and unostentatious as when John Bagsbury was first introduced into it. They live in the same house, and to-night, after dinner, they came out into the same big firelit room where John met Alice Blair. Sponley lighted a cigar and dropped into his easy-chair before the fire, while Harriet sat down at the piano. He never tired of hearing her play, and now he listened comfortably and blew smoke rings. But as the minutes went by her music lost consequence and ceased to be anything but a fitful progression of hard, dissonant chords. Once he glanced curiously at her, but her eyes were on the keys, and she did not see him. Finally she struck a grating discord, softly, and continued it as though loath to let it go until it throbbed away in silence. “What the dickens are you playing!” he exclaimed. Her hands leaped from the keys; she caught her breath in a gasp, and there came a splash of color into her face followed by a dead pallor. Two or three seconds passed before she could command her voice. “You startled me,” she said monotonously; “I was thinking.” “I’m sorry,” he said, with real concern. “You’re so different from other women in the matter of nerves that I never think of your having any.” She smiled somewhat ruefully at the compliment. “I was thinking,” she said, “about that Jervis Curtin affair. It puzzles me. You haven’t told me all about it.”