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“I suppose you think he’d have been all right if he’d married you,” said Percy, bitterly.

“Yes, I do.” Stella buttoned her glove with an air of finishing something, and then looked at Percy without animosity. “Charley and I both have sporty tastes, and we like excitement. You might as well live in Newark if you’re going to sit at home in the evening. You oughtn’t to have married a business woman; you need somebody domestic. There’s nothing in this sort of life for either of us.”

“That means, I suppose, that you’re going around with Greengay and his crowd?”

“Yes, that’s my sort of crowd, and you never did fit into it. You’re too intellectual. I’ve always been proud of you, Percy. You’re better style than Charley, but that gets tiresome. You will never burn much red fire in New York, now, will you?”

Percy did not reply. He sat looking at the minute-hand of the eviscerated Mission clock. His wife almost never took the trouble to argue with him.

“You’re old style, Percy,” she went on. “Of course everybody marries and wishes they hadn’t, but nowadays people get over it. Some women go ahead on the quiet, but I’m giving it to you straight. I’m going to work for Greengay. I like his line of business, and I meet people well. Now I’m going to the Burks’.”

Percy dropped his hands limply between his knees.

“I suppose,” he brought out, “the real trouble is that you’ve decided my earning power is not very great.”

“That’s part of it, and part of it is you’re old-fashioned.” Stella paused at the door and looked back. “What made you rush me, anyway, Percy?” she asked indulgently. “What did you go and pretend to be a spender and get tied up with me for?”

“I guess everybody wants to be a spender when he’s in love,” Percy replied.

Stella shook her head mournfully.

“No, you’re a spender or you’re not. Greengay has been broke three times, fired, down and out, black-listed. But he’s always come back, and he always will. You will never be fired, but you’ll always be poor.” She turned and looked back again before she went out.

* * * * *

Six months later Bixby came to young Oliver Remsen one afternoon and said he would like to have twenty dollars a week held out of his pay until his debt was cleared off.

Oliver looked up at his sallow employee and asked him how he could spare as much as that.

“My expenses are lighter,” Bixby replied. “My wife has gone into business with a ready-to-wear firm. She is not living with me any more.”

Oliver looked annoyed, and asked him if nothing could be done to readjust his domestic affairs. Bixby said no; they would probably remain as they were.

“But where are you living, Bixby? How have you arranged things?” the young man asked impatiently.

“I’m very comfortable. I live in a boarding-house and have my own furniture. There are several fellows there who are fixed the same way. Their wives went back into business, and they drifted apart.”

With a baffled expression Remsen stared at the uneven shoulders under the skin-fitting alpaca desk coat as his bookkeeper went out. He had meant to do something for Percy, but somehow, he reflected, one never did do anything for a fellow who had been stung as hard as that.

Century, May 1916