pads formed by the base of his bony thumbs, before he went in to Isabel. This was the more fortunate as, in spite of her inquiry, prompt and pointed, he but moved about the room looking at her hard. Then he stood before the fire a little with his hands behind him and his coat-tails divided, quite as the person in permanent possession. It was an indication his wife appeared to take in; but she put nevertheless presently another question. "You object to telling me what he said?" "He said 'You know, my dear fellow, really----!'" "And is that all?" "Practically. Except that I'm a thankless beast." "Well!" she responded, not with dissent. "You mean that I _am_?" "Are those the words he used?" she asked with a scruple. Gedge continued to think. "The words he used were that I give away the Show and that, from several sources, it has come round to Them." "As of course a baby would have known!" And then as her husband said nothing: "Were _those_ the words he used?" "Absolutely. He couldn't have used better ones." "Did he call it," Mrs. Gedge inquired, "the 'Show'?" "Of course he did. The Biggest on Earth." She winced, looking at him hard--she wondered, but only for a moment. "Well, it _is_." "Then it's something," Gedge went on, "to have given _that_ away. But," he added, "I've taken it back." "You mean you've been convinced?" "I mean I've been scared." "At last, at last!" she gratefully breathed. "Oh it was easily done. It was only two words. But here I am." Her face was now less hard for him. "And what two words?" "'You know, Mr. Gedge, that it simply won't do.' That was all. But it was the way such a man says them." "I'm glad then," Mrs. Gedge frankly averred, "that he _is_ such a man. How did you ever think it _could_ do?" "Well, it was my critical sense. I didn't ever know I had one--till They came and (by putting me here) waked it up in me. Then I had somehow, don't you see? to live with it; and I seemed to feel that, with one thing and another, giving it time and in the long run, it might, it _ought_ to, come out on top of the heap. Now that's where, he says, it simply won't 'do.' So I must put it--I _have_ put it--at the bottom." "A very good place then for a critical sense!" And Isabel, more placidly now, folded her work. "_If_, that is, you can only keep it there. If it doesn't struggle up again." "It can't struggle." He was still before the fire, looking round at the warm low room, peaceful in the lamplight, with the hum of the kettle for the ear, with the curtain drawn over the leaded casement, a short moreen curtain artfully chosen by Isabel for the effect of the olden time, its virtue of letting the light within show ruddy to the street. "It's dead," he went on; "I killed it just now." He really spoke so that she wondered. "Just now?"