“You’d need all that philosophy, and a good deal more, before you’d lived for a month in a place like the Harris shack,” he warned me.

“Not if I knew you loved me, O Kaikobad,” I very promptly informed him.

“But you do know that,” he contended, man-like. I was glad to find, though, that a little of the bitterness had gone out of his eyes.

“Feather-headed women like me, Diddums, hunger to hear that sort of thing, hunger to hear it all the time. On that theme they want their husbands to be like those little Japanese wind-harps that don’t even know how to be silent.”

“Then why did you say, about a month ago, that marriage was like Hogan’s Alley, the deeper one got into it the tougher it was?”

“Why did you go off to Edmonton for three whole days without kissing me good-by?” I countered. I tried to speak lightly, but it took an effort. For my husband’s neglect, on that occasion, had seemed the first intimation that the glory was over and done with. It had given me about the same feeling that we used to have as flapperettes when the circus-manager mounted the tub and began to announce the after-concert, all for the price of ten cents, one dime!

“I wanted to, Tabbie, but you impressed me as looking rather unapproachable that day.”

“When the honey is scarce, my dear, even bees are said to be cross,” I reminded him. “And that’s the thing that disturbs me, Dinky-Dunk. It must disturb any woman to remember that she’s left her happiness in one man’s hand. And it’s more than one’s mere happiness, for mixed up with that is one’s sense of humor and one’s sense of proportion. They all go, when you make me miserable. And the Lord knows, my dear, that a woman without a sense of humor is worse than a dipper without a handle.”

Dinky-Dunk sat studying me.

“I guess it was my own sense of proportion that got out of kilter, Gee-Gee,” he finally said. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember. If I got deeper into this game than I should have, it wasn’t for what money meant to me. I’ve never been able to forget what I took you away from. I took you away from luxury and carted you out here to the end of Nowhere and had you leave behind about everything that made life decent. And the one thing I’ve always wanted to do is make good on that over-draft on your bank-account of happiness. I’ve wanted to give back to you the things you sacrificed. I knew I owed you that, all along. And when the children came I saw that I owed it to you more than ever. I want to give Dinky-Dink and Poppsy and Pee-Wee a fair chance in life. I want to be able to start them right, just as much as you do. And you can’t be dumped back into a three-roomed wickiup, with three children to bring up, and feel that you’re doing the right thing by your family.”

It wasn’t altogether happy talk, but deep down in my heart I was glad we were having it. It seemed to clear the air, very much as a good old-fashioned thunder-storm can. It left us stumbling back to the essentials of existence. It showed us where we stood, and what we meant to each other, what we must mean to each other. And now that the chance had come, I intended to have my say out.

“The things that make life decent, Dinky-Dunk, are the things that we carry packed away in our own immortal soul, the homely old things like honesty and self-respect and contentment of mind. And if we’ve got to cut close to the bone before we can square up our ledger of life, let’s start the carving while we have the chance. Let’s get our conscience clear and know we’re playing the game.”