“Oh, no,” he protested. “Don’t go so far as that, my dear!” He laughed as he spoke, but despite both his protest and his laughter, his looks deserved what Mrs. Simms declared to have been her previous opinion of him. Bodily, he was still a featherweight, and of that miraculous slimness which appears inconsistent with the possession of the organs necessary to sustain life; but his glance was the eagle’s. “I did think so!” his wife exclaimed. “I used to think you were different, and that women couldn’t fool you any more than men could.” “Anne, what woman has taken enough interest in me to fool me?” “Nobody. She doesn’t take any interest in you; she only uses you.” “Who is she?” The lady gave utterance to an outcry of indignant amazement at the everlasting stupidity of a man beguiled by a woman; for, in spite of the ages during which men have been beguiled by women, the women who are not doing the beguiling never cease to marvel that it can be done. “You poor blind thing!” she cried. “Julietta Voss!” At this he was merely amused. “You’re not feeling well, Anne,” he remarked. “What you say doesn’t sound like you at your best. I never heard anything so——” Mrs. Simms interrupted him. “Who paid her caddy?” “I did. I paid both hers and old John’s, but I don’t think we need——” “What made you keep so far away from them? What made you play down the south side of the course and leave them so far over on the north? Did she ask you to?” “Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “It just happened! They were playing the same ball, against me. Naturally——” “‘Naturally,’” she said, taking up the word sharply, “it was like that all round the course, wasn’t it?” “What of it? I understood you to charge me with being fooled by poor little Julietta——” “Stop calling her ‘little’,” Mrs. Simms commanded. “She’s a foot taller than you are!” “Well, then,” he mildly remonstrated, “with all that advantage, what would she take the trouble to fool me for? If she wanted to make love to me she could do it openly, by force.” At this, his wife’s face showed sheer despair of him. “I just said that she doesn’t take the slightest interest in you—except as a foil! This is the third time.” “The third time what?” “The third time you’ve been manœuvred into coming out here to play with them. Good heavens, don’t you _see_ it?” “No,” he returned, meekly. “Tell me in words of one syllable, Anne.” Mrs. Simms complied, and in her response there was that direct brevity not unusual with her sex in the climaxes of bitter moments. “She’s trying to get my sister’s husband away from her!” The bewilderment of Mr. Simms was complete. “Old John?” he cried. “Old John _Tower_? Poor little Julietta Voss is trying to get old John away from Mildred? Of all the preposterous——” His laughter interrupted his enunciation. “Why, that’s the most far-fetched fancy work I ever—— But of course you don’t mean it seriously.” “I do.”