Zaidee was his little, gentle girl, his dainty, delicate princess, toward whom his attitude must be always that of tenderness and chivalry. But the boy was different. Civilized man still usually lives in the outward semblance of a harem, in a household with a large predominance of women. Justin had a fierce pride in the boy, the one human creature in the house of the same nature as himself. They two, they two! And he knew the nature; there was no need of any pretense or fooling about it. His “Lie still, you rascal, or I’ll make you,” voiced in its sternness an even deeper sentiment than he had for Zaidee. Something of this hardness was still in his manner when he came down once more, after reducing the child to quiet, and leaned over his wife to kiss her good-by. “Are you going out again?” Her voice had a dull patience in it and her eyes refused to meet his. “Yes; did you want me for anything special?” He stood, half irresolute, hat in hand. His clear, fair skin and blue eyes showed off to advantage, in the estimation of his wife, set off by his luxuriously lined overcoat. It was a new one; he had lately, at Lois’ insistence, gone to a more expensive tailor, and the richness of the cloth and its very cut and finish exhaled an air of prosperity. Nothing so betrays the status of the inner man as that outer garment. Justin’s discarded one had passed through every stage of decent finesse—the turned-up coat-collar, the reversed closing, the relined sleeves, the buttons sewed on daily at the breakfast-table by his wife in the places from which the ineffectual threads of her workmanship still dangled. This perfect and ample covering seemed in its plenitude to make a new and opulent person of him. “No, of course I don’t want you for anything special”—she spoke in a monotone. “I only thought you were going to stay home.” “I’ve got to go to Leverich’s, and I want to speak to Selden about the house first. I promised him I’d stop there.” They had decided to take one of the houses that were building on the hill, and Selden was the architect. “You have been out every night this week”—there was a suspicion of tears in her voice. “I do so hate to be left alone.” “You have Dosia.” “Dosia! How would _you_ like to be left with Dosia? I can’t make out that girl. She gets more wooden every day, and if I speak to her she looks as if she thought I was going to beat her. Oh, Justin, stay home this evening—won’t you, dear?” “I can’t—I wish I could.” He said the words mechanically, for he was burning to get away to Leverich to talk over some matters. “I must be at Selden’s by half-past eight.’ “It is only a quarter-past now—you can walk there in five minutes. Do sit down for a moment. I don’t get any chance to talk to you at all, and you come home so late to dinner that you never see the children any more—except to scold them, as you scolded Redge to-night.”