The Detroit Times

Copyright 1915, by Pathe Exchange, Inc. All moving picture rights and all foreign copyrights strictly reserved.

Ray Norris' law office faced Willard Fall's engineering office directly across the court of the same sky scraper in the city. The two young men had become acquainted through their business proximity. Invitations had been extended, calls exchanged, and the two families were in a fair way of becoming friends.

Ray Norris was a prosperous young attorney, clean cut, handsome, ambitious, and tenderly devoted to his wife. She was a good looking young woman, of 22 or thereabouts, fresh as an April morning, dark eyed, and with a bewitching, elusive smile ever lingering about the corners of her adorable red lips. If her husband was tenderly devoted to her, she was infinitely devoted to him, and set him up on a pedestal to be idolized for all time.

Mrs. Fall on the other hand was 35 engrossed in her social duties as a self-imposed social monitor and guardian of the morals of her set, who was too busy with her many tasks to grow old gracefully. Her husband, well-groomed slave and careless, was known as a lady's man and already disquieting rumors were reaching his wife on the morning on which our story opens. Mrs. Fall had seen him through the window talking to a pretty society bud, and had sent the maid to call him back. There had been a scene and he had left for his office in a huff.

II

"To Miss Foster

How are you this fine morning? I hope your father is some better?" It was Norris talking to his stenographer.

"Good morning, Mr. Norris. Yes, some better, thank you."

She was trying to be brave, and answered with an attempt at cheerfulness that set her head pounding violently, and made her grasp at her desk for support.

He had thrown off his light top coat, and without looking at her sat down, and was in a moment deep in his morning's mail. Some communication of more than ordinary importance caused him to stop in his envelope slitting, and he rose to confer with her upon its contents.

Then for the first time he looked at her and knew from her ashen cheek and unnaturally bright eyes that something was wrong.

"Why, Miss Foster," he exclaimed in genuine concern, "whatever's the trouble? You look like the dickens. What's up?"

"Oh, nothing," she answered, trying to make light of his concern. "Leastwise, nothing that matters. Just a bothersome cold, and a little headache. By the way, is that that Smith & Hodson letter? What's the latest development this morning? What did they say to your proposal to—"

"Never mind that for a moment. Don't please try to turn the conversation off into that channel. You're ill."

"I assure you, Mr."

He made a quick gesture indicative of his intention not to be put off in his inquiry, and crossing quickly to where she stood, took both her pale, thin hands in both of his, and noted with quick concern that they were burning.

"This will never do," he said gravely, and with emphatic earnestness. And he repeated half aloud, half to himself, "never, never do. I'm afraid I've been a bit of a brute lately, what with the night work, Sundays and skimped lunch hours."

He disregarded her attempt to assuage his self reproach, and went on. "But I'll see to that. You're slated for a vacation, and that in short order. I'll make arrangements."

He turned thoughtfully away, and went back to his letters.

Willard Fall, across the court, in his office had seen Norris cross to where Myra stood at her desk beside the broad window, and an evil smile lighted his coarse features as he noted Norris take Myra's hands in his and hold them while he spoke solicitously to her. Devoid of concern for the welfare of his own help, he had not the finesse to attribute another's concern to anything other than a personal motive, and he felt a miserable elation at what he considered "Norris' little game."

His reflections were disturbed by the slight, recurrent creaking of his door, as of someone trying cautiously inch by inch to open it unnoticed. He sprang from his chair, strode with swift soft steps to the door, pulled it suddenly open, and confronted—his wife.

He bowed with mock courtesy at her startled surprise at being apprehended, and spoke with more than his usual unction.

"So my dear, spying on me, eh? Had I divined your coming, I might have made preparations so's not to disappoint your expectations and lived up to my reputation as a blackguard roue. You should have let me know, so's I could have made ready a tableau to satisfy your insatiable desire for a scene. Fancy the notoriety, to say nothing of the alimony. Might engage a publicity agent, pose as injured innocence, and get picture in the Sunday magazine."

She turned, and had started to go, when his voice again arrested her.

"Your ideal seems to have clay feet. You indulge in the common fallacy of imagining that every man you make intimate acquaintance with is a model of propriety. No one who is acquainted with your reputation as the watch dog of Society—here he grinned—would ever believe you to be frightfully unsophisticated.

Why it was only a short while ago, when waiting usually out of this window across the court, I saw Norris holding hands with his pretty stenographer.