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cups of tea he had drunk. He said two—she insisted it was three.

“We’ll split the difference,” he said at last, passing his empty cup. “Fill it again and we’ll call it two-and-a-half.”

As she refilled the cup he said gravely———

“Do you know that Grace and I never quarrelled?”

“I can quite believe it, Jimmy,” she answered evenly. “It’s a pity you didn’t. Both of you have a lot to learn.”

“You think quarrels are necessary to married happiness?”

“I know they are,” she answered with decision, looking straightly at him as she passed his cup. “Do you know of anything more soul-shattering, more deadly, than monotony? Monotony is the worst punishment we have been able to devise for our most hardened criminals. It’s worse than death by hanging. What chance has connubial bliss against such a thing? A good quarrel between a man and his wife is as beneficial to their marriage system as an occasional pill is to their physical system.”

“That’s not a very romantic simile,” he smiled.

“We’re not discussing romance, my dear, but marriage.”

“Might not the two be synonymous occasionally?”

“Adam propounded that question after he had lost Eden. What makes you think that I am the first with sufficient wisdom to answer it? You have made a business of writing about these things—what do you think?”

Harley studied her gravely for a moment.

“My case—our case—is rather an exception, don’t you think?” he retorted.

Patricia laughed shortly.

“We musn’t let our conceit blind us to the fact that all this—our love, our eating together here, everything about the present situation—is just another of those illicit love-affairs which sound so