The older men were trying to calm the racket to a more decorous note. But already they had cleared the dishes and glass from his end of the table, and the Magnificent Wreck, with glistening eyes, was applauding, urging him on. He hopped on his chair, like a boy, as he had done years ago at college dinners. He placed one foot on the table to steady himself, raised the long-stemmed wine-glass above his head, and, less certainly, out rolled the second stanza. It was good to be drunk, if this were being drunk! Again, with all the volume of the first time, sprang the notes of the chorus. Simmons raised his long-stemmed glass and waved it slowly in a circle above his head. They clapped and stamped and sang over again the chorus. “Why not leave? Why inflict this on yourself?” the doctor asked his companion. “_That_ does not make me miserable,” she answered coldly, recognizing how he had mistaken her. “It is foolish, of course, to drink too much. He will be sorry to-morrow.” “What is it then that burns your eyes, and gives you that look of pain?” “I will _never_ tell you!” “Perhaps I can guess,” he answered at random. Her eyes lost their defiance. Perhaps this subtle doctor, who could read the miseries of life, had seen and comprehended all, that afternoon when he had come to call. The shame that she vowed to herself he should know last of all, he knew, perchance, _best_ of all. “Don’t reject my sympathy,” he added. “I pity you.” His voice had softened from the tone of irony. His gentleness broke down her pride. There was something humanly warm and kindly in his sympathy. It seemed to reach farther than her husband’s. A mist gathered in her eyes, and she lowered her head that he might not see the possible tears and the quivering lips.... Would her fate have been thus cruel, if, in the years gone by, in the Sicilian garden, she had preferred this man,--if this man, who loved her, had been bound with her? Would she have known the clutch of terror and felt the wound from the arms of her son? The child who was hers and another’s--might he not have been wholly hers? She thought bitterly how the male heart had its escape from misery,--such an easy, common one! She wanted _her_ escape. She could not drink and shout; she could fly, leave the terror behind her, and seek a new self in a new world. “To one that loves you as I do, your misery is his misery, and your despair is his.” She felt that she should resent his words, but her heart welcomed them. There was a cry in the room below them, then a crash, and the song came to an inglorious end. Simmons had circled the swaying yellow ball of sparkling wine in too ample an arc. The champagne dashed upon the laughing, upturned face of their hostess; the glass shattered on the floor. A kindly hand saved Simmons from falling. Dr. Vessinger’s sharp eyes detected the glance of contempt in the wife’s face.