Tompkins gave a prolonged sigh.

«After my bath,» he continued, drawing a merciful veil of silence over the matter, «I have breakfast and drive to my office in New York, where I work until four. Then I lay off, and if it’s summer I hurry out here for nine holes of golf, or if it’s winter I play squash for an hour at my club. Then a good snappy game of bridge until dinner. Dinner is liable to have something to do with business, but in a pleasant way. Perhaps I’ve just finished a house for some customer, and he wants me to be on hand for his first party to see that the lighting is soft enough and all that sort of thing. Or maybe I sit down with a good book of poetry and spend the evening alone. At any rate, I do something every night to get me out of myself.»

«It must be wonderful,» said Gretchen enthusiastically. «I wish we lived like that.»

Tompkins bent forward earnestly over the table.

«You can,» he said impressively. «There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Look here, if Roger’ll play nine holes of golf every day it’ll do wonders for him. He won’t know himself. He’ll do his work better, never get that tired, nervous feeling – What’s the matter?»

He broke off. Roger had perceptibly yawned.

«Roger,» cried Gretchen sharply, ’there’s no need to be so rude. If you did what George said, you’d be a lot better off.» She turned indignantly to their host. «The latest is that he’s going to work at night for the next six weeks. He says he’s going to pull down the blinds and shut us up like hermits in a cave. He’s been doing it every Sunday for the last year; now he’s going to do it every night for six weeks.»

Tompkins shook his head sadly.

«At the end of six weeks,» he remarked, ’he’ll be starting for the sanatorium. Let me tell you, every private hospital in New York is full of cases like yours. You just strain the human nervous system a little too far, and bang! – you’ve broken something. And in order to save sixty hours you’re laid up sixty weeks for repairs.» He broke off, changed his tone, and turned to Gretchen with a smile. «Not to mention what happens to you. It seems to me it’s the wife rather than the husband who bears the brunt of these insane periods of overwork.»

«I don’t mind,» protested Gretchen loyally.

«Yes, she does,» said Roger grimly; ’she minds like the devil. She’s a shortsighted little egg, and she thinks it’s going to be forever until I get started and she can have some new clothes. But it can’t be helped. The saddest thing about women is that, after all, their best trick is to sit down and fold their hands.»

«Your ideas on women are about twenty years out of date,» said Tompkins pityingly. «Women won’t sit down and wait any more.»

«Then they’d better marry men of forty,» insisted Roger stubbornly. «If a girl marries a young man for love she ought to be willing to make any sacrifice within reason, so long as her husband keeps going ahead.»

«Let’s not talk about it,» said Gretchen impatiently. «Please, Roger, let’s have a good time just this once.»

When Tompkins dropped them in front of their house at eleven Roger and Gretchen stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking at the winter moon. There was a fine, damp, dusty snow in the air, and Roger drew a long breath of it and put his arm around Gretchen exultantly.

«I can make more money than he can,» he said tensely. «And I’ll be doing it in just forty days.»

«Forty days,» she sighed. «It seems such a long time – when everybody else is always having fun. If I could only sleep for forty days.»

«Why don’t you, honey? Just take forty winks, and when you wake up everything’ll be fine.»