happy and entertained by young Atkins. 

And this was the first night of her honeymoon? She realized it in a pitying sort of way, as if she were considering the case of some girl other than herself. It seemed dreadfully sad, she thought, and then smiled, realizing that she was the little wife whom she was pitying, and that the tall man over the other side of the room, so engrossed in his game, was her husband. 

What other wife in the world had spent the first evening of her 23 married life watching a game of billiards she wondered? And a little helpless laugh escaped her. 

23

Young Atkins looked down quickly. 

"I beg your pardon. What did you say?" 

"Nothing—I only laughed." 

She bit her lip to prevent the laugh from coming again. How stupid she was, because nothing amusing had happened. 

Only once Chris came across to her. 

"Would you like some coffee?" he asked. 

"No, thank you." 

"Do your head good." he said, but without looking at her. His eyes were watching the table the whole time, and without waiting for her to speak again he went off back to the game. 

"Chris really plays a thumping good game," Atkins confided to her. "I always tell him he's a rotten player, but he isn't a rotten player at anything, really! Fine sportsman, you know." 

Marie nodded. She knew everything there was to know about Chris. At home she had a scrapbook, her most treasured possession, carefully pasted up with every little newspaper cutting that had ever been printed about him, from the first long jump he had won at a local school to an account of a wedding a few months back at which he had been best man. 

She had whispered to Aunt Madge as they kissed good-bye, to be sure to cut the announcement of their wedding from the newspapers so that she could add it to her collection, and Aunt Madge had promised. Somehow it made her feel sick now to think of it! Such a farcical wedding—no real wedding at all! No 

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