"'Do what you want with it; only I want you to enjoy it like a lady.'
"Maybe I was wrong there--maybe I was. It was pride, I'll admit; but there wasn't a lady came to the stands that looked finer than Fanny Montrose, as I always used to call her. I got to be something of a figure, as you know, and the little woman was always riding back and forth to the games in some automobile, and more often with Paul Bargee.
"One afternoon Ed Nichols, who was catching me then, came up with a serious face and said: 'Where's your lady to-day, Larry--and Paul Bargee?' And by the way he said it I knew what he had in mind, and good friend that he was of mine I liked to have throttled him. They told me to pitch the game, and I did. I won it too. Then I ran home without changing my clothes, the people staring at me, and ran up the stairs and flung open the door and stopped and called: 'Fanny Montrose!'
"And I called again, and I called a third time, and only the child came to answer me. Then I knew in my heart that Fanny Montrose had left me and run off with Paul Bargee.
"I waited all that night without tasting food or moving, listening for her step on the stairs. And in the morning the postman came without a line or a word for me. I couldn't understand; for I had been a good husband to her, and though I thought over everything that had happened since we'd been married, I couldn't think of a thing that I'd done to hurt her--for I wasn't thinking then of the millions of Paul Bargee.
"In the afternoon there came a dirty little lawyer shuffling in to see me, with blinking little eyes behind his black-rimmed spectacles--a toad of a man.
"'Who are you?' I said, 'and what are you doing here?'
"'I'm simply an attorney,' he said, cringing before my look--'Solomon Scholl, on a very disagreeable duty,' he said.
"'Do you come from her?' I said, and I caught my breath.
"'I come from Mr. Paul Bargee,' he said, 'and I'd remind you, Mr. Moore, that I come as an attorney on a disagreeable duty.'
"With that I drew back and looked at him in amazement, and said: 'What has he got to say to me?'
"'My client,' he said, turning the words over with the tip of his tongue, 'regrets exceedingly--'
"'Don't waste words!' I said angrily. 'What are you here for?'