I had never heard a word or a hint of a scandal about her--for the best of reasons; she did nothing to cause that kind of talk. But, how curious is coincidence! On the very evening of the day of our divorce discussion Edna had her first experience of scandal, and I immediately knew of it. After leaving her I went to the Federal Club, where I often took a hand in a rather stiff game of bridge before dinner. I drifted into the reading room, glanced idly at the long row of current magazines. In full view lay the weekly purveyor of social news, a paper I had not looked at half a dozen times in my life, and then only because some one had asked me to read a particular paragraph. The week’s issue of this scandal monger had just come in. I threw back the cover, let my glance drop upon the page. I was hardly aware that I was reading--for my thoughts were elsewhere--when I became vaguely conscious that the print had some relation to me. I reread it; it was a veiled attack upon Edna. All unsuspected by her husband--so the story ran--she had come to America to divorce him that she might marry a German nobleman of almost royal rank. A voice close beside me said: “What is it amuses you so in that dirty sheet?” It was Armitage. I started guiltily. Then my common sense asserted itself, and I pointed to the paragraph. When he had read it I said: “Who’s the German? I’m not well enough up on the nobility to be able to guess, though it’s probably plainly told.” “The Count von Biestrich,” said he. “Thanks,” said I, no wiser than before, and we went up to play bridge. A year or so before I might possibly have talked freely with Armitage; but the day of our closest intimacy had passed. He was still my intimate friend; I was his--with several large reservations. Why? Chiefly because when he passed the critical age his mind took the turn for the worse. At forty to forty-five a man begins to reap his harvest. Armitage had many and varied interests, but the one that affected his nature most profoundly was women. He mocked at them; he was always inventing or relating stories about them of the more or less gamey sort. But, somewhat like his pretensions of disdain for birth and fashion, his wordy scorn of women concealed a slavish weakness for them. After forty this began to disclose itself in his features. Their handsome intellectuality began to be marred by a sensual heaviness; and presently his wit degenerated toward a repellent coarseness. It takes delicate juggling to make filth attractive. After forty a man does well to be careful how he attempts it; for, after forty, the hand loses its lightness. I rather avoided Armitage; not that I was squeamish, but my sense of humor somehow rarely has responded to rude rootings and pawings in the garbage barrel.