meant pathetically well, but received scant patience.

Five of his clubs had ladies' days, the sixth found no use for women within its reposeful precincts, but to each of the five other ladies' days Fowler conducted his wife ceremoniously, showing her every year the same pictures on the walls, the same rooms, and his favorite reading-chair, joking with the waiters and the porters before her just to show how popular he was, presenting to her any men who happened to be available, and in general giving an exhibition before her admiring eyes of a man among men. And how happy it all made him!

There came a ladies' day when, wearing a suit two years old, a handkerchief with holes in its body from frequent washings, but with a gorgeous purple border, a tie that had been buried in his wardrobe for so long that it was new, a pansy boutonnière, and five inferior cigars in his pocket (when one does not smoke oneself it is difficult to appreciate what bad form an inferior cigar is), he repaired with his little dove wife to the club. It was a particularly smart ladies' day, and all "the men" were there. He tried to appear the sprightliest and happiest of the buzzing kaleidoscopic throng, and his little wife clung to his arm, smiling a set-piece little smile, while he bore her along through the rooms, stopping to address "the men" on the way, or to offer one of his cigars. The Great Man was there. Henry Jennings dragged his little wife up to him.

"Hello, Hen," said the Great Man, genially. He had just been asked to preside at a very important dinner, and he was in a particularly pleasant mood.

"Wonderful man that," remarked Henry Jennings when they had passed on. "You and he are so congenial, are n't you, dear?" said the little wife. Henry Henry Jennings squared his shoulders.

"We both know a good thing when we see it," he laughed. He had temporarily forgotten his troubles in this warm, cordial atmosphere. As they went from one room to another the crowd pushed them in between some portières, where they stood for a short breathing space while he wiped the heat of sociability off his face with a plain white handkerchief which was hidden at the bottom of his

pocket beneath the showy one. "That Smith is a mighty-" he began, when, from the other side of the curtain Smith's voice rose, loud, unmistakable.

"Lord!" it said, "will you look at this cigar Hen J. gave me; and my shoulder still aching with the crack he handed it. Will somebody please suppress him! We're all getting sick of him and his everlasting jokes." The voice retreated slowly as Smith moved off. "They say he 's losing on the market, so it won't be-"

Henry Jennings and his wife did not look at each other. They pushed aside the curtain and walked once around the room. After a first quiver on her little face Mrs. Fowler turned bravely to her husband. "Dearest," she said, "there's so much noise I can't hear anything. I'm quite deafened with it. Let's go home."

Henry Jennings glanced at her quickly, but her big, gray eyes told him nothing. He did not see the flicker of the hurt, wild thing disappearing in their depths. "As you say, my dear," he answered, and his voice sounded strangely quiet. "It is rather noisy here."

On the way out they came across several of "the men." He started as if to speak to them, but the words choked in his throat, and he coughed nervously instead. The little wife guided him behind them. She chattered almost gaily as they walked out. "Let's go to -'s for dinner," she suggested. So, even though he could not really afford it, Henry Jennings, from the just-trampled-on gene, rosity of his heart, turned slow steps toward the restaurant. Through dinner he tried to answer her attempts at conversation, but there was a dumb, hurt look in his eyes which, although of course no one could really be blamed for it, was still very painful to see. Only one cigar was left. At the end of dinner he put his hand in his pocket to give it to the head waiter, hesitated, and finally went on with it still in his pocket.

The next day at his usual hour he dressed carefully, kissed his wife, and apparently started for the club; but when he got on the avenue, he walked instead up and down it until he was tired, then went into the sat at a little table alone in the café, drank some mineral

water and at dinner-time went home. His wife did not question him, but he started to explain that he had taken a day off just for a change. By the end of a nice little dinner he was trying to laugh and joke as before. He did not know that she knew.

Oh, yes, he went to his club again. He resigned from four of them, to economize, he said, but the remaining one saw him regularly every day, with this difference: he was evidently proving something to himself. Instead of joining the group about the fire, he would seat himself at some distance from it and, with elaborate indifference, pretend to read a paper while he waited to see if any of "the men" would come to him. They always nodded pleasantly to him, some of them even called a "Hello, Hen J." across the room, but no one ever came. No one begged him to join the group, and no one asked him to dinner. He grew to be a familiar figure, sitting alone, rather bowed about the shoulders, looking out of the window or reading, always reading the same paper. As he walked by the group on his way home, if some spoke to him, he would stop, his face brightening, and at the slightest encouragement he would have sat down by them again; but they had gotten out of the habit of expecting him to, and none of them thought of asking him. That was all: none of them thought.

one

At home the little wife tried with all her slender strength to cheer him up; but she was n't a man, and he could n't clap her on the back and-oh, there is always a difference. He pretended all this time that things were as they had been. He told her stories that had been told him some time ago, and he made up imaginary conversations between himself and "the men." She listened, applauding his every word.

But all this was a strain, and he soon began to show it. His hands trembled a great deal, he walked more slowly than is natural, and he seemed to have lost the savor of things. Once only did he recover a touch of his old-time enthusiasm. At a certain dinner the Great Man made a wonderful speech. The headline world seized upon it the following morning, editorials were written upon it, men quoted it, sermons referred to it. It was

the speech of the year, and Henry Jennings, sitting alone in the club window, read it with his forlorn heart beating excitedly. He almost ran home to his wife that evening to read it aloud to her, and the next day he composed a letter to the Great Man congratulating him in wholesouled words on his success. The Great Man really meant to answer that letter when he received it, but somehow there were so many demands on him,—you understand how it is,-and the matter slipped his mind, so that Henry Jennings watched the mail every morning in vain.

About this time stocks went up, and he made a little money; but he did not seem to care much about it. Then he fell ill, the doctor was sent for, and a trained nurse called; so the money came in handy, after all. He lingered on for several months. The little wife, knowing it could not last, made up her mind to a very shocking deception. Every time the telephone bell rang down-stairs she told him it was one of "the men" calling up to ask how he was; every time the door-bell rang she told him it was one of "the men" inquiring for him,—no, they could n't see him until he was stronger, -every day or so she would order pansies sent to him, and tell him that they came from the Great Man. It was worth it. He lay in his bed and talked now sanely, now deliriously, about his friends. "I thought some time ago," he confided to her, "that I was kind of dropping off; but I must have imagined it. You might send a case of that Moselle we have lying in our cellar, doing nothing, to Smith. You said. he called up yesterday, did n't you?" And in the meanwhile every one had forgotten, so simple is it to forget.

Three days before his birthday Henry Jennings died. He died perfectly content; he hardly realized what was happening. After the first convulsion of grief, the shuddering, tearing grief that pulls and shakes and crushes,-the little widow dragged herself together and began to make arrangements for the funeral. No one helped her except the doctor. The family, usually expected to rally at funerals, even though it lives apart at other times, had become virtually extinct. A few distant cousins and aunts, who had their own troubles, sent tele

grams, put on white shirt-waists, black tailor suits, black bands on their coats, refused a few dinner invitations, and considered their duty done. There was no one to go, no one to follow Henry Jennings to his last resting place except the little widow, and she knew that if he knew, it would spoil his rest. How could she be sure that he did not know?

His funeral was to be on his birthday. The day after he died, she put on her long crape veil for the first time, called a cab, drew down the shades, and told the coachman to drive to the Great Man's house. From her tremendous, stormtossed love a resolution had grown. Henry Jennings should have a man, a great man, at his funeral. She was ushered into the library, and soon the Great Man came in. He did not even know that Henry Jennings had died until he saw the widow's pale little face staring at him from out its crape frame; then he was very distressed, oh, very distressed indeed-so distressed that he forgot to look at his watch, and in consequence missed a business appointment. But he was also puzzled at this unusual visit from the widow. She soon enlightened him. She told him the whole pitiful story-how much his friendship had meant to her husband, how he had hungered for friends, how "the men" had

forgotten him, how happy he was at the end when he thought they were remembering him, how she had sent the pansies, and how the funeral was to be on his birthday. She was big enough to forget her pride, the little widow.

"H'm!" said the Great Man, "that is sad and horrible. Poor, poor Hen; I always liked him. His birthday, you say?" And yours," cried the little widow, tremulously. "He never forgot you. Don't you remember the telegrams? I hope you will come to-morrow. Oh, please come! It would make him so happy."

The Great Man walked over to the window. "I have made an engagement," he said at last, "but of course-I '11 come."

The next day the little widow and the Great Man walked together beside the sleeping Henry Jennings. The Great Man carried a huge bunch of pansies, and for once he forgot that he was great and shed a very human tear over his friend. But "the men" at the club did not hear of it until one of them, looking idly through the death-notices, came across the name. Then they all stopped playing poker a moment, shook their heads, and said: "Pshaw! poor old Hen J.! I wondered where he had gone." And they all determined to write to the little widow. And they all forgot.