Some women and many men are compounded and shaped into sentient beings without the infusion of so much as a pennyweight of tact.

Many women and a few men combine with this deficiency—which is, in itself, a deformity—a fatal facility for saying exactly the wrong thing when the wrong thing will do most harm.

Miss Marvel had taken all the honors in this line which native bias and feminine fussiness could win, and she wove a new spray into her laurel wreath one day in the March succeeding the winter in which Barton Ashe and Agnes Welles were made one—in law and gospel.

The morrow would be his wife’s birthday, and Barton had in his breast pocket a tiny box containing a sapphire ring for her, when he arose to resign his seat in the street car to the dashing spinster, whom he recognized as soon as she entered. He had never seen her since his wedding eve, but she was not a woman to be forgotten or overlooked. She was in great force to-day, gorgeously appareled and flushed beyond high-rouge mark by three hours at a literary breakfast, given at Delmonico’s to a distinguished foreigner.

“I am surcharged with electric thought,” she confided to Mr. Ashe when she had taken the vacated place with a cavalier nod that might mean “Thanks,” or “That’s only decent, my good man.”

“Ah!” said Barton, in naÏve wonderment, for the want of anything else to say.

“Surcharged! bristling! I could fancy that at the approach of the negative pole I should crackle and emit sparkles like a brisk battery. Such a feast of intellect! such flow of soul! such scintillating wit! Three hours of such intercourse were worth ten—a thousand cycles of Cathay. Our guest was superb! such dignity and such graciousness of affability as can only coexist in an Old World product.”

She spoke loudly, after the manner of the New World product (genus homo, feminine gender). Several solid men peered at her around or over the evening papers. Two giddy girls, who had taken without thanks or scruples seats from weary men, smiled undisguisedly. Barton, standing in the aisle, holding on by the strap, his knees abraded by the jet passementerie of Miss Marvel’s velvet skirt, could not budge an inch. He must hear and, hearing, essay reply of some sort. “Ah!” albeit the safest and most commodious monosyllable in the language, cannot go on forever.

“The lunch was largely attended, I suppose?” he ventured in tones studiously lowered.

“By every woman in New York who is worth the notice of an intelligent being. With one distinguished exception. Mrs. Ashe’s absence was the occasion of universal regret. As a well-wisher let me warn you that you may be mobbed some day for your unconscionable cruelty to the highest order of created things; for imprisoning the eagle and stilling the song of the lark. At least fifty people asked me to-day why Agnes Welles had disappeared from the literary firmament. For one and all, I had one and the same reply. ‘She has taken the bridal veil,’ I said, tears in eyes and voice. ‘In consequence of that piece of barbarity, and for no other cause, the places that once knew her know her no more.’ One woman—I won’t divulge her name, lest you should hate her—said she ‘should as soon think of chaining a thrush to the leg of a kitchen chair as of obliging that glorious young thing to resign her Heaven-appointed mission for the position of caterer, housekeeper, and seamstress.’ I shall work that bon mot into my next literary letter to the Boston Globe. Another delightfully satirical creature advised me to take up the cause of ‘Great Women Married to Small Men,’ in my next series of papers upon ‘Unconsidered Wrongs of Our Sex.’ You see the reputation you are earning for yourself with the powers that be!”

Barton Ashe was a sensible man, well educated and well bred. Under favoring circumstances, as when inspired by the society of his wife and her loving appreciation, he was quick with repartee and apt at fence even with a wordy woman. Under the present onslaught he was furious and dumb. Had a man insulted him, and less grossly, he would have knocked him down or given him his card and demanded a meeting elsewhere. This berouged and bedizened old maid compromised him in the eyes of solid men and giddy girls by entering into conversation with him at all. Each shrill word was a prickle in a pore of his mental cuticle. She advertised his wife as one of her kind, arraigned him as despot and churl, menaced him with public exposure, and posed as Agnes’ champion against the oppressor on whose side was the power of law and tradition—made him ridiculous to all within the sound of her brazen tongue—and he was powerless.

He did the only thing possible to a man calling himself a gentleman, when baited to desperation in a public place by a woman who passes for a lady—he lifted his hat silently and pulled the strap to stop the car. Other passengers than Miss Marvel marked the dark face and blazing eyes, and curious regards wandered back to the offender, smiling to herself at this new proof of her ability to, in her favorite phrase, “drive a poisoned needle under a man’s fifth rib.”

“Great Women Married To Small Men!”

The most offensive count in the unanswered indictment seemed to be flung after him by the shrieking March wind. Until this moment of intensest exasperation he had never consciously compared himself mentally with his wife. That spiritually she was purer and better he was ever ready to admit. The gallant alacrity with which men yield the palm of virtue and piety to women may be due to the candor of real greatness, but a keen student of human contrarieties is excusable for likening it, sometimes, to the ostentatious generosity of the child who surrenders to a playfellow the wholesome “cookey,” while he holds fast to the plum cake for his own delectation.

“Great” and “Small” were explicit terms that threw our hero upon the hostile-defensive. Agnes was a pearl among women, as good, true, and sweet as any man need covet for a lifelong companion. She kept his house well and his home bright, her sympathies were ready, her love was poured out upon him in unstinted measure, she studied his tastes, humored his few foibles, in brief, filled his life, or so much of it as she could reach, most satisfactorily. Her mind was fairly stocked with miscellaneous information; she had remarkable facility in composition and graceful fancies, and, above all, the happy knack of saying, in a telling way, things people cared to hear. Being in “the literary ring,” she had secured a respectable audience, and, being a tactful woman, she had kept it.

“Great,” she was not, in any sense of the word, except according to the perverted standard of the “Club” gang, the mutual-admiration circle, with whom every poetaster was a Browning, and the writer of turgid essays a Carlyle or Emerson.

He gave a scornful snort in repeating the adjective. Agnes would be the first to deprecate the application of it to herself. Yet—if she had not invited the commendation of the PrÉcieuses ridicules—had her name never been bandied from mouth to mouth in public, the antithetical “small” had never been fitted to him. Husband and wife were in false positions. That was clear—and galling. Almost as clear, and harder to endure, was his conviction that the situation could not be altered for the better.

He had not made up his mind to graceful acceptance of the inevitable when he fitted the latchkey in the door of his own house.

The popular impression as to the housewifery of pen-wrights had no confirmation within the modest domicile of which Agnes Ashe was the presiding genius. During her mother’s protracted invalidism and her own betrothal she had studied domestic economy, including cookery, with the just regard to system and thoroughness that made her successful in her other profession of authorship. Her computations were correct and her methods dainty. She deserved the more honor for all this because she was not naturally fond of household occupations. If she reduced dusting to a fine art, mixing and baking to an exact science, it was conscientiously, not with love for the duties themselves.

Once, when praised for excellent housekeeping by a friend in her husband’s hearing, her native sincerity made her say:

“You are mistaken in supposing that the drudgery connected with home-making is easy or pleasant to me. If I did not feel it my duty to go into the kitchen sometimes, and to arrange rooms, I doubt if I should ever do either. Nor am I fond of sewing.”

“Yet your needle-work is exquisitely neat,” said the surprised visitor.

“Because I hold myself to the necessity of doing well what I undertake. It is all business, not delight.”

After the visitor had gone, Barton gave a gentle and needful caution.

“Don’t talk in that way to acquaintances, dear,” he said. “I don’t want people to report that your tastes are unfeminine.”

“Surely there are other feminine tastes besides love for needle, broom, and egg-beater?” Agnes protested, no less gently. “Why should every woman be proficient in baking, when every man is not compelled to learn book-keeping? I am faithful in the discharge of domestic duties because I love you and consider your happiness rather than selfish ease. I love my home, and to enjoy the effect of clean, orderly rooms and well-served meals, I am willing to perform tasks for which I have no real liking. The game is well worth the candle—a good many waxlights, in fact—but I question if you, for example, really like to draw up conveyances and make searches.”

“Illustration is not argument,” said Barton dryly. “You are undeniably a clever woman, my love, but your reasoning would hardly convince a jury. Women’s efforts in that direction are what we style ‘special pleading.’”

This talk was held two months ago. Agnes knew better, by now, than to attempt argument with him, and his love grew apace because of the forbearance he mistook for conviction of his ability to direct thought with action. She was the dearer for being dutiful. The docility with which she listened to his dicta, never betraying a suspicion that they were dogmas, won him to forgetfulness of the circumstance that she was his senior by six years and a blue-stocking.

She was in the front hall when he got home to-night, receiving the adieu of a spectacled personage whom she introduced as “Mr. Rowland of Boston.”

“Charmed, I am sure,” said the stranger airily. “The more that I am positive of enlisting Mr. Ashe’s powerful interest upon my side, and that of the book-loving public. If Mrs. Ashe will pardon the additional trespass upon her time, I should like to explain to you, my dear sir, the nature of my petition to her, and now to yourself.”

They returned to the parlor, and he had his say. It was succinct and comprehensive. He wished to engage Mrs. Ashe to write one of a projected series of popular novels. Her coadjutors would be authors of repute; the programme was attractive and must take immensely with the best class of readers. His terms were liberal.

In any other mood than that for which Miss Marvel was chiefly responsible, even a prejudiced man must have been gratified by the compliment to his wife implied in the application. It acted upon the chafed surface of husbandly vanity and dignity like moral aqua fortis. Barton listened with lowering brow and compressed lips while the fashionable publisher subjoined appeal to statement. When both were concluded the master of the house waited with palpable patience, apparently to make sure that all the pleas were in, then arose with the air of the long-bored householder who dismisses a book agent.

“Mrs. Ashe is so well acquainted with my views upon the subject of her undertaking any literary work whatsoever, that I may be allowed the expression of my surprise at her reference of this matter to me. I believe, however, that the feminine littÉrateur considers a show of deference to her husband a graceful form. Your appeal to me is, you see, the idlest of courtesies. Now, as I have just come home after a wearisome day of business, may I ask you to excuse me from further and fruitless consideration of this subject?”

He bowed and went off to his dressing room.

The man of the world, left thus awkwardly en tÊte-À-tÊte with an insulted wife, always remembered with grateful admiration the perfect breeding that helped him out of the dilemma.

“Mr. Ashe is very tired and far from well,” Agnes remarked, eye and smile cool and unembarrassed. “As one conversant with the fatigues and harassments of business life, you need no apology beyond this for his seeming brusqueness. I dare say—” with archness that was well achieved—“that Mrs. Rowland would comprehend, better than you, what serpentlike wisdom we wives must exercise in broaching any subject that requires thought to our hungry lords. I will appeal from Philip famished to Philip full, in due season, but I think you would better not depend upon me. I am a very busy woman just now, and shall be for some time to come.”

“It would give me solid satisfaction to punch that fellow’s head,” muttered the publisher in the street. “He is a boor and a tyrant, and his wife is an angel.”

He was wrong in both specifications. Barton Ashe was a vain man, and his vanity was smarting from a recent attack. His ideas of the supremacy, intellectual and official, that do hedge a husband were overstrained, but natural.

Agnes Ashe was a very mortal woman, walking up and down her pretty room after the departure of her visitor, hands clenched until the nails wounded the flesh, and cheeks so hot they dried the tears before they fell. Her breath came fast between the shut teeth. Women will comprehend how much easier it was to forgive her husband for the slur cast upon her than for lowering himself in the eyes of a stranger.

“I am afraid of myself!” she whispered pantingly. “I am afraid of myself! Must I, then, despise him utterly? What right has he to charge upon me as shame what others account as honor? Can it be that he is conscious of being small and fears to let me grow?”

By different roads, the refined woman, who loved her art for its own sake and reverenced it for the good it might do, and the pretender, tolerated by true artists out of charity, and out of respect for the active benevolence that redeemed her from the rank of a public nuisance—had arrived at a like conclusion.

Barton, after his bath and toilet, sat down to dinner, and scarcely spoke until excellent clear soup and the delicious creamed lobster prepared by Agnes’ own hands, had paved the way for more substantial viands. Then his righteous wrath was partially cooled by perception of the truth that the still, pale woman opposite meant to enter no defense against the aspersions cast upon her in another’s hearing. Nay, more, she made no attempt to cheat him into a milder mood, broached no prudent topics, attempted no diversion. Second thought found fresh fuel for displeasure in her reticence. The double offense of Miss Marvel’s tirade and the airy publisher’s errand were not condonable by discreet silence.

He slashed simultaneously into a roast of beef and the grievance upon his mind.

“I met your particular crony, Miss Marvel, in the car on my way uptown. She was, if possible, more detestably impertinent than usual.”

Agnes beckoned to the waitress and gave her in a low tone an errand to the kitchen. Glancing up at her husband, she saw that he had laid down the carver and was gazing sternly at herself.

“May I, as the least important member of this household, inquire why you sent that girl out of the room? I may be, as your dear friends assert, a small man married to a great woman, but I am credited by others with a modicum of common sense and discretion. I am willing to abide by the consequences of whatever I say at my own table and in the presence of my servants, if I have any proprietorship in either.”

Red heat he had never seen before in Agnes’ face suffused it now, her eyes dilated and gleamed.

“I sent the girl from the room because she was recommended to me by the matron of an orphan asylum in which she was brought up. Miss Marvel is a manager of the institution and had the girl trained in a school for domestics. Mary is much attached to her. I thought it hardly safe or kind to discuss her in Mary’s presence.”

Barton met generous heat with deadly coldness.

“When is your waitress’ month up?”

“On the fifteenth.”

“This is the seventh. Pay her a week’s wages to-morrow and pack her off. I will have none of that woman’s spies in my house—that is, always supposing it to be mine. I understand this afternoon’s scene. She is kept posted as to the status of domestic affairs.”

“You are out of humor, Barton, or you could not be so unjust to me and to a faithful servant.”

Griselda would not have retorted in a hard, cutting tone, but Griselda could neither read nor write. Diffusion of knowledge has a tendency to breed sedition among the lower orders.

Clubs for the lofty, and lager beer saloons for the lowly, stand, with controversial Benedicks, for the “refuges” foreign cities offer to the fugitive from wheels and hoofs.

“Excuse me for leaving you to digest your dinner and the memory of that last remark in solitude,” Barton said sardonically. “I shall finish my dinner at the club.”

The library was the coziest room in the house. Before Mr. Rowland called, Agnes had looked into it to see that the fire was bright and that Barton’s easy-chair, newspaper, and cigar-stand were in place. Upon the table was a bowl of Bon SilÈne roses he had ordered on his way downtown that morning. She had poured out his coffee and lighted his cigar here for him last night. It all rushed over her with the pure deliciousness of the roses’ breath, as she returned to the deserted apartment after dinner. As she moved, the fragrance broke into waves that overwhelmed her with the sweet agony of associativeness.

Sinking upon her knees before her husband’s chair, she laid her head within her enfolding arms and remained thus until the clock struck nine. Then she spoke aloud:

“What has he given me in exchange for my beautiful ideal world and for my work? A drugged cup, with gall and wormwood in the bottom.”

The slow, scornful syllables jarred the perfumed waves and echoed hollowly in the still corners.

She arose, unlocked a secretary at the back of the room, and took out a worn portfolio—also locked. Selecting from the contents several large sheets of paper, she laid them in order upon the table, and drew from an inner pocket a gold pen in a shabby handle. With it she had written her first book. For six years she had used no other. Before dipping it into the ink, she kissed it.

“I have come back to you!” she said.