Briggs drew his hands from his pockets and sat erect. “Helen,” he said, leaning toward his wife, “if you weren’t a woman you’d be a parson, like your father and your two younger brothers. It’s in your blood.” Helen ignored the remark. “That makes seven thousand, doesn’t it?” “But I never touch _that_ money. I add it to the principal.” “So we have only five thousand to live on!” Helen exclaimed, in a startled voice. Her husband smiled with patient superiority. “No, no! Now you talk as if you were a millionaire’s daughter. How much did your father live on, I’d like to know?” “Eighteen hundred a year.” “Well, I dare say he was just as happy on that as we are on----” He stopped, looking at her with an expression in his eyes that she had never seen there before. “On what?” she asked, quietly. “On what we spend,” he replied. “The ball we gave last night must have cost at least eighteen hundred,” Helen persisted. “Well, I guess we’re good for it,” Briggs replied, complacently. Helen lost control of herself. “That’s what I can’t understand,” she cried, excitedly. “How are we good for it?” Douglas Briggs rose and walked slowly toward his wife. He laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “My dear child, that’s not a nice way to speak to your husband!” “Please don’t call me your dear child again, Douglas. Now, I have a reason for asking these questions, and I want you to give me direct answers.” Briggs let his hand drop. Helen rose and walked to the edge of the desk. “I think you must be ill, dear,” he said, looking at her solicitously. She tried to keep the tears from her voice. “I shall be, unless you tell me the truth.” Douglas Briggs kept his eyes on her for a long time. She turned from him. “Do you mean that you want to know whether I am an honest man or not?” he asked, in a low voice. “I have never questioned your honesty, Douglas.” He hesitated. “I will tell you the truth,” he said, as if he had just passed through a struggle. “Last year I must have spent nearly thirty thousand dollars. It was all I had. At the end of the year I was five thousand dollars in debt. That has since been paid.” “How did you make that money?” she asked, facing him. Briggs looked down at the table. His eyes wandered over his papers and over the black scrapbook. “That’s a cruel question for a wife to ask her husband,” he remarked at last. “Not when she knows he will be able to answer it,” Helen said, firmly. “Well, I--I made it mostly through my law practice.” Helen began to breathe quickly. “But I heard you say the other day that since you came to Washington you had been forced to give up your practice.” “So I have--very largely, almost wholly, in fact,” he replied, growing impatient again. “But there are some interests that I have to look out for here.” “Such as what?” “Well, there’s the--there are some railroad interests.” “Some railroad interests!” Helen repeated, blankly. “Yes.” “The railroad that Mr. West is concerned in, do you mean?”