“Oh, Nolan,” came Eveley’s voice over the telephone, in its most wheedling accent, “I am so sorry to spoil our little party for to-night, but it is absolutely necessary just this once. The most utterly absurd case of painful duty you ever heard of. And although you do not exactly approve of my campaign, you would simply have to agree with me this time. And—”
“Well, since I can’t help it, I can stand it,” he said patiently. “What is it this time? Some silly woman finding it her duty to house and home all straying and wounded cats, or a young girl determined to devote her life to the salvation of blue-eyed plumbers, or—”
“It is a man,” she interrupted, rather acidly.
“Ah,” came in guarded accents.
“A man,” he repeated encouragingly, though not at all approvingly.
“Yes. A long time ago he very carelessly engaged himself to a giddy little butterfly in Salt Lake City, and he doesn’t want to marry her at all, but he feels it is his duty because they have been engaged for so many years. Isn’t it pitiful?”
“But it is none of your business,” he began sternly.
“It is another engagement with the enemy in my campaign,” she insisted. “Oh, just think of it—the insult to love, the profanation of the sacrament of marriage—the—the—the insult to womanhood—”
“You said insult before.”