He consented to Zada's plan and promised to call up his wife. Zada took a brief triumph from that. But Peter was ashamed and afraid to speak to Charity even across the wire. He knew that it has become as difficult to lie by telephone as face to face. The treacherous little quavers in the voice are multiplied to a rattle, and nothing can ever quite imitate sincerity. So much is bound to be over or under done. Cheever made a pretense of rushing out of his office. He looked at his watch violently, so that his secretary should be startled--as he politely pretended to be. Cheever gasped, then rushed his lie with sickly histrionism: “I say, Hudspeth, call up my--Mrs. Cheever, will you? And--er--tell her I've had to dash for the train to--er--Phila”--cough--“delphia. Tell her I'm awfully sorry about to-night. Back to-morrow.” “Yessir,” said Hudspeth, winking at the gaping stenographer, who looked exclamation points at her typewriter. Hudspeth called up Mrs. Cheever. He was no more convincing than Cheever would have been. A note of disgust at his task and of deprecatory pity for Mrs. Cheever influenced his tone. Charity was not convinced, but she could hardly reveal that to Hudspeth--although, of course, she did. She was betrayed by her very eagerness to be a good sport easily bamboozled. “Oh, I see. Too bad! I quite understand. Thank you, Mr. Hudspeth. Good-by.” She did not hear Hudspeth growling to the stenographer as he strolled over and leaned on her chair unnecessarily--there were other chairs to lean on, and she was not deaf: “Rotten business! He ought to be ashamed of himself. A nice wife like that!” The stenographer sat forward and snapped, “You got a nice wife yourself.” She was a little jealous of Zada, perhaps--or of Mrs. Cheever--or of both. Peter left his office to escape telephoning Charity, but he could imagine how the message crushed her. He felt as if he had stepped on a hurt bird. When he met Zada he kept trying to be patient and forgiving with her, in spite of her blameworthiness. Zada saw through his sullenness, and for a little moment was proud of her victory. Then she began to suffer, too. She understood the frailty of her hold on Cheever. His loyalty to her was in the eyes of the world a treachery, and his disloyalty to her would be applauded as a holy deed. She was becoming an old story with him, as Charity had become one. She suffered agonies from the cloud on her title and on her name, and she was afraid of the world. A woman of her sort has no sympathy to expect; her stock in trade vanishes without replenishment, and her business does not build. In spite of herself she cannot help envying and imitating the good women. As a certain great man has confessed, “There is so much good in the worst of us,” that there is hardly any fun in being bad. It is almost impossible to be very bad or very good very long at a time.