"Indeed! It's apparently getting time for me to interfere. What's your game?" "I'm going to squelch that detestable Fred Rangely." "How?" "My slippers," Elsie said vivaciously, again thrusting one of them forward, "are ravishing." "Gad," her husband returned, regarding her with a look of the utmost amusement in his topaz-brown eyes, "you have a good deal to say about them." "Do you notice anything particular about my hair?" she asked. "It looks as if it might come down." "It will come down," she corrected, nodding. Then she glanced at the clock. "It will come down in about twenty minutes; all tumbling over my shoulders. I shall be so mortified and surprised!" Her husband stretched himself luxuriously back in his chair, regarding her with laughing eyes. There was an air of perfect understanding between the two which might have been an effectual enlightenment for any man who thought of making love to the wife. Elsie went on, telling off on her slender fingers the points as she made them. "In fifteen minutes I shall be standing on the piano in the drawing-room, straightening a picture. I never can bear a picture crooked, and I had Jane tip it a little this morning, just to vex me. Fred Rangely will come in unannounced. Of course I shall be dreadfully confused, and have to get down. In my maidenly confusion I am almost sure I can't help showing my slippers, and just a trifle--a very discreet trifle, of course,--of these beautiful, beautiful stockings. Nothing vulgar, you know, but"-- "But just enough," interpolated Wilson with huge enjoyment. "You needn't apologize. I don't begrudge the poor devil whatever satisfaction he can get out of that." "And then as he is helping me down, with his heart in a flutter,--it will flutter, I assure you." "You mean his vanity; but it's of no consequence. He'd call it a heart if he were putting the scene in a novel." "With his whichever it is in a flutter, by some provoking accident down comes my hair and tumbles over his shoulders." Wilson regarded her with amused admiration. "Five years ago," he observed placidly, "I should have thought you were telling me half the truth to cover the other half, and were really having a devilish flirtation with that cad." Elsie flushed, and into her gay voice came a strain of seriousness. "Five years are five years," she answered. "Don't go to dragging all that up again, Chauncy." His laugh was not untinged with malicious delight, but he put his hand on hers and patted her fingers. "All right, old girl. Bygones are bygones. But what in the world is all this fooling with Rangely for?" "Why, don't you see? The fool is sure to say something so silly that I can snub him within an inch of his life. I've only been holding off until he had that thing written for the Churchman. Now I've got that, I'll settle him." "Oh, the gratitude of women!"