"Say, darling, you are a marvel," he would remark after every quotation. "Now, how in the world did you ever manage to think that up? I suppose just this minute, as you sit there looking so sweet in your white dress, just such things are floating through your brain, eh?" "No, they are not," replied Margaret. Oh, if she had only understood the horrible depth of a lie! "Suppose Von Rosen is making up to little Annie?" said Wilbur presently. "I don't know." "Well, she is a nice little thing, sweet tempered, and pretty, although of course her mental calibre is limited. She may make a good wife, though. A man doesn't expect his wife always to set the river on fire as you have done, sweetheart." Then Wilbur fished from his pockets a lot of samples. "Thought I must order a new suit, to live up to my wife," he said. "See which you prefer, Margaret." "I should think your own political outlook would make the new suit necessary," said Margaret tartly. "Not a bit of it. Get more votes if you look a bit shabby from the sort who I expect may get me the office," laughed Wilbur. "This new suit is simply to enable me to look worthy, as far as my clothes are concerned, of my famous wife." "I think you have already clothes enough," said Margaret coldly. Wilbur looked hurt. "Doesn't make much difference how the old man looks, does it, dear?" said he. "Let me see the samples," Margaret returned with an effort. There were depths beyond depths; there were bottomless quicksands in a lie. How could she have known? That night Wilbur looked into his wife's bedroom at midnight. "Awake?" he asked in his monosyllabic fashion. "Yes." "Say, old girl, Von Rosen has just this minute gone. Guess it's a match fast enough." "I always thought it would be Alice," returned Margaret wearily. Love affairs did seem so trivial to her at this juncture. "Alice Mendon has never cared a snap about getting married any way," returned Wilbur. "Some women are built that way. She is." Margaret did not inquire how he knew. If Wilbur had told her that he had himself asked Alice in marriage, it would have been as if she had not heard. All such things seemed very unimportant to her in the awful depths of her lie. She said good-night in answer to Wilbur's and again fell to thinking. There was no way out, absolutely no way. She must live and die with this secret self-knowledge which abased her, gnawing at the heart. Wilbur had told her that he believed that her authorship of _The Poor Lady_ might be the turning point of his election. She was tongue-tied in a horrible spiritual sense. She was disfigured for the rest of her life and she could never once turn away her eyes from her disfigurement.