been so before, but never had I been placed in a situation

"Advise who right?" inquired John Mayrant.

It helped me wonderfully. My will gripped my floating thoughts and held them to it. "Friend of mine in trouble; though why he asks me when I'm not married--I'd be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife. Man doesn't love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but they say only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marry then."

"Wouldn't it be rather immoral?" John asked.

"Morality is queer thing. Like kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time. Abraham and wives--perfectly respectable. You take Pharaohs--or kings of that sort--married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now, of course. But you ask men about two wives. They'd say something to be said for that idea. Only there are the women, you know. They'd never. But I'm going to tell my friend he's doing wrong. Going to write him to-night. Where's ink?"

"It won't go to-night," said John. "What are you going to tell him?"

"Going to tell him, since only one wife, wicked not to break his engagement."

John looked at me very hard, as he stood by the window, leaning on the sill. But my will was getting all the while a stronger hold, and my thoughts were less and less inclined to stray to other world-problems; moreover, below the confusion that still a little reigned in them was the primal cunning of the old Adam, the native man, quite untroubled and alert--it saw John's look at me and it prompted my course.

"Yes," I said. "He wants the truth from me. Where's his letter? No harm reading you without names." And I fumbled in my pocket.