“Can you make out which is which, Anne?” the older sister inquired in a voice of faint hope. “Isn’t it John who’s playing off there by himself, and Hobart she keeps so close to her?” “Not very likely!” Anne returned with a short laugh. “She’s using _my_ husband as a chaperon strictly, and I must say he’s behaving like a tactful one. It’s your John she ‘keeps so close to her’—as usual, Mildred!” Mildred made merely a desolate sound, and then the sisters resumed the troubled silence that falls between people who have long since discussed to a conclusion every detail of an unhappy affair, and can only await its further development. The three players came nearer slowly, growing dimmer in the evening haze as they grew larger; until at last it was difficult to see them at all. Other things were as dim as they, the player to the south found to his cost; and, finally deciding to lose no more balls that day, he crossed the fairway to his competitors. “I’m through, John,” he called, cheerfully. “It’s no use in the world trying to play out these last two holes.” “I don’t suppose it is,” the other man assented. “Julietta rather wanted to, though.” He turned to the tall girl beside him. “Hobart says——” “I heard him!” she said, laughing a light laugh, a little taunting in its silveriness. “Hobart’s a well-trained husband. You know what that is, don’t you, John? A well-trained husband is one who doesn’t dare to call his soul his own. Hobart’s been worrying this last half-hour about what Mrs. Simms will say to him for keeping her waiting.” “You’re right about that, Julietta,” Mr. Hobart Simms agreed. “My wife’s a pretty amiable lady; but I’ve kept her waiting longer than I like to, and old John’s done the same thing. So, as he’s probably in the same apologetic state I’m in, and it’s ridiculous to try to play these last two holes in the pitch dark anyhow, I suggest we——” The girl interrupted him, though it was to his brother-in-law that she addressed herself. “_Are_ you in the ‘same apologetic state’ that Hobart is, John?” she asked; and there was an undercurrent in her voice that seemed to ask more than appeared upon the surface. She seemed to challenge, in fact, and yet to plead. “Are you as afraid of Mrs. Tower as Hobart is of Mrs. Simms, John?” Mr. Tower laughed placatively. “My dear Julietta! Of course if you’d like to play it out——” “There!” Julietta said, gaily triumphant. “You see he wants to, himself. I believe you’re the one man I know who isn’t terrorized by a wife, John.” She stepped closer to him, speaking through the darkness in a warm, soft voice, almost a whisper. “But then you’re a wonderful man, anyhow—the most wonderful I ever knew, John.” “Oh, no!” He laughed deprecatingly, and, pleased with her, yet embarrassed by his modesty, coughed lightly for a moment or two. “Of course I’m not; but I do value your thinking so, Julietta. I appreciate it very deeply indeed.”