"There, there," broke in Herman good-naturedly. "It is just as well not to go into a characterization of Mrs. Rangely. I own that there isn't much good to be said of her; so it is as well to let her pass." "Well, so be it," his wife assented, smiling. "I have only to say," she added, turning to her cousin, "that when Grant declines to have a woman discussed it is equivalent to a condemnation more severe"-- "Nonsense," protested Herman. "Don't believe her, Ashe. As for Mrs. Rangely, it's enough to say that she is merely an imitation in most things, and that she has called out the worst of her husband's nature instead of the best. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm afraid it's true." Mrs. Herman looked at him with a smile which seemed to tease him for having been betrayed into saying a thing so much more severe than were his usual judgments. Then with true feminine instinct she brought the talk back to its most significant point. "Why did you ask about his wife?" she inquired of Philip. "I--I did not know," he returned, so evidently disconcerted that she did not press the matter. Had Helen been a gossip she might have added that Rangely had acquired the reputation of being always philandering with some woman or other. Before his marriage he had been the slave of Mrs. Staggchase, and now, after devotion to all sorts of society women, he had come to be counted as one of the train of admirers who offered their devotion at the shrine of Mrs. Wilson. Where a Frenchwoman prides herself on the intensity of the devotion of some man not her husband, an American of the same type glories in the number of slaves that her charms ensnare. In either case the root of the matter is vanity rather than passion. The American fashion is at once the more demoralizing and the less dangerous. Mrs. Wilson in the early days of her married life had tried to make her husband jealous by allowing the desperate attentions of a single lover. She never repeated the experiment. The lover went abroad to recover from the sting of having been made hopelessly ridiculous, and Mrs. Wilson learned that in marrying she had found a master. Fortunately she had married for love, and no woman loves a man less for finding him able to control her. In these days Mrs. Wilson amused himself by having a troop of admirers, and perhaps prided herself upon being able to outdo the wiles of the other women of her set in securing and holding her captives; but she discussed them with her husband with the utmost frankness, mocking them to their faces if they made a step across the line which she drew for them. They were kept in a state of marked but respectful admiration. It was expected of them that they should pretend to be consumed by a passion as violent as they might please, but always a passion which was hopeless, which asked for no reward but to be allowed to continue; which found in mere admission to her presence joy enough at least to keep it alive.