As Helen busied herself about the room the telephone rang. Farley answered. “Hello!” he cried. “Who is it? Citizens’ Club? All right. I’ll wait. Oh, hello, Gilchrist! Yes, this is Mr. Briggs’s house. We’ve sent the reply by messenger. He says the libel isn’t worth replying to. I might have told you that.” He listened for a few moments. Then he turned to Briggs. “Great excitement over that matter down at the club. They want me to come down.” “Go along, then.” “All right. I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” said Farley, into the telephone. As he hung up the receiver he remarked: “I’ll make short work of them. Good-night, Mrs. Briggs,” he called from the hall. “I’ll see you soon again, though. Perhaps I’ll bring you news of your husband’s election.” XXI Helen gathered the wraps she had thrown on the couch and started to leave the room. When she stood at the door her husband said: “Are you going upstairs?” “Yes; I’m tired,” she replied, without looking round. She stood, however, as if expecting him to speak again. “You--you won’t wait till the returns come in?” She turned slightly. “I’ll come down again,” she replied, glancing at him for an instant. Briggs walked toward her. “We’ve been such strangers in the past few weeks,” he said, gently, “that I should think you might take advantage of this chance for a chat.” Helen dropped her wraps on a chair. “I will stay if you wish.” “If I wish!” he repeated, with quiet bitterness. “I thought perhaps you’d like to stay. You do everything nowadays with the air of a martyr, Helen.” “I sha’n’t trouble you much longer, Douglas,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Then there is no way of our coming to an understanding?” She kept her eyes from him. “We understand each other very well now, I think.” “Now!” he repeated. Helen started to take up the wraps again. He held out his hand. “Wait a minute. I didn’t detain you to pick a quarrel. I wanted to make one last appeal to you.” “For what?” she asked. “I can’t stand living like this any longer,” he went on, desperately, throwing off all self-restraint. “I can’t stand the thought of going back to Washington without you. I’m lonely. I’ve been lonely for months. You know that as well as I do.” She hesitated, trying to control herself. Then she said, without a trace of feeling in her voice: “You have your work. You have as much as I have.” “You treat me as if you had no regard, no respect, for me. You make me feel like a criminal. I thought when I threw that man West over----” She looked him straight in the face. “But why did you do it? Not because he was what you knew him to be, but because he had insulted me. That’s what I can’t forget. All these years you knew what he was.” They stood looking at each other. “And I was just as bad as he was,” he said, in a low voice. “You mean that, don’t you?” Helen turned away. “I didn’t say that.” “And is there nothing I can do to make things right between us?”