"Do you think that was it? It wasn't that—that she wanted to get rid of me?"
His answer struck me oddly.
"Not a bit of it, not then. Lord, no!"
I repressed the questions these words called up, taking a minute to think the situation over.
"At any rate, I went," I continued, with outward calm. "It was after a rather stormy scene with Vio, in which she said she thought she had married a man and not a nervous old lady."
"Oh, she said worse than that to me, lots cf times, what?"
"Yes, but you weren't her husband; and you were not desperately in love with her."
"Often thought Vio was like one of those queer-mixed cocktails that 'll set chaps off their nuts who'll take a tumbler of whisky neat and never turn a hair."
"There's something in that," I agreed; "but it makes the kind of woman whose contempt is the harder to put up with. When she began handing it out to me—well, I went. That's all there is to be said about it. You tell me that Vio wanted to sacrifice a dear one; and she did. I was no more fit for the job I undertook than—than little Bobby would have been if he'd lived till then."
"That's another thing. Vio should have had more children, what?"