The Judge snapped off the switch, and putting out the light in the library, ascended the stair. The hard look had deepened on his face. As he gazed at that nonchalant epitome of ribaldry he had thought of other men who had so often been grouped about the table in that room--men of tempered habit, of standing and achievement. His own son had contempt for such company. It bored him. He preferred to "go out with the boys" and to come home in the small hours--as he had to-night. So he was thinking as he entered the room above. There he stopped in surprise, for across the threshold stood his wife. She was in her night-gown, over which she had thrown a robe of pale crêpe with lace at the neck and wrists. Her face showed a heightened colour and her lips were trembling. He drew forward a chair. "I thought you were asleep long ago," he said. She declined the seat with a gesture. "I heard your voices. What did you say to Chilly?" "I said 'Good night,'" he answered heavily. "That was about all." Her lip curled. The glance she gave him was critically cold. When she married Beverly Allen she had loved him--in so far as she had been capable of loving. To her marriage had meant the assumption of woman's predestined place in the social fabric, the inevitable change of habit which time brings to all, with its widened orbit and opportunities. She had been drawn to him by every instinct of selection which took count of name, standing, worldly endowment and mental equipment; but there had been behind it no throb of maidenly impulse, no thrill of the great current that feeds the romance of the world. The one point at which life for her caught and focused had been the son, whose misconduct stood so sharply out against the spotless Allen name. He was her one weakness, her love for him an unreasoning passion that had swayed her from his birth. To her his transgressions showed as venial, his delinquencies as but the forgivable errors of youth. The few instances in which he had been openly called to task by his father had been sharpened in the latter's memory by her resentment. But on none of these occasions had her husband seen her so moved as now. He did not know that for many minutes she had stood on the dark landing listening to the murmurous voices, and that now she resented what seemed to her a deliberate evasion. She spoke with slow, even point: "As a monologist Chilly is a distinct surprise. Was he saying 'good night' also?" Under the unaccustomed anger of her voice the Judge's pale face flushed. He took off the eyeshade and set it on the table, as he replied evenly: "Chilly is not himself to-night, Charlotte. Does it matter particularly what he said?" Beneath his voice now there was a kind of subterranean compassion, a note almost of entreaty, as though in this trouble that touched them both he could have wished to comfort her, if, indeed, she had made that possible.