Chapter 12 - Page 2

forgotten how you--"

"Well, you can forget it now. I didn't tell her anything like that. I didn't think of it, for one thing. She knew all the time that you were in town. I'm tired of lying to her. I told her the truth. I told her you were drunk."

Manley's jaw dropped. "You--you told her--"

"Ex-actly. I told her you were drunk." Kent nodded gravely, and his lips curled as he watched the other cringe. "She called me a liar," he added, with a certain reminiscent amusement.

Manley brightened. "That's Val--once she believes in a person she's loyal as--"

"She ain't now," Kent interposed dryly. "When I let up she was plumb convinced. She knows now what ailed you the day she came and you didn't meet her."

"You dirty cur! And I thought you were a friend. You--"

"You thought right--until you got to rooting a little too deep in the mud, old-timer. And let me tell you something. I was your friend when I told her. She's got to know--you couldn't go on like this much longer without having her get wise; she ain't a fool. The thing for you to do now is to buck up and let her reform you. I've always heard that women are tickled plumb to death when they can reform a man. You go on over there and make your little talk, and then buckle down and live up to it. Savvy? That's your only chance now. It'll work, too.

"You ought to straighten up, Man, and act white! Not just to square yourself with her, but because you're going downhill pretty fast, if you only knew it. You ain't anything like you were two years ago, when we bached together. You've got to brace up pretty sudden, or you'll be so far gone you can't climb back. And when a man has got a wife to look after, it seems to me he ought to be the best it's in him to be. You were a fine fellow when you first hit the country--and she thought she was getting that same fine fellow when she came away out here to marry you. It ain't any of my business--but do you think you're giving her a square deal?" He waited a minute, and spoke the next sentence with a certain diffidence. "I'll gamble you haven't been disappointed in her."

"She's an angel--and I'm a beast!" groaned Manley, with the exaggerated self-abasement which so frequently follows close upon the heels of intoxication. "She'll never forgive a thing like that--the best thing I can do is to blow my brains out!"

"Like Walt. And have your picture enlarged and put in a gold frame, and hubby number two learning his morals from your awful example," elaborated Kent, in much the same tone he had employed when Val, only the day before, had rashly expressed a wish for a speedy death.

Manley sat up straighter and sent a look of resentment toward the man who bantered when he should have sympathized. "It's all a big