"Poor innocent scoundrel!" old Dyckman snarled. "He probably got her into trouble, and she played on his sympathy."

This was what Jim sorely needed, some unjust accusation to spur him out of his shame. He sprang to his feet and confronted his father.

"Don't you dare say a word against my wife."

"Oh, look at him!" his father smiled. "He's grown so big he can lick his old dad. Well, let me tell you, my young jackanapes, that if anybody has said anything against your wife it was you."

"What have I said?"

"You've said that you married her secretly. You've not dared to let us see her first. You've not dared to announce your engagement and take her to the church like a gentleman. Why? Why? Answer me that, before you grow so tall. And who is she, anyway? I hear that you had a prize-fight with Peter Cheever and got expelled from the club."

"When did you hear that?"

"It's all over town. What was the fight about? Was he interested in this lady, too?"

One set of Jim's muscles leaped to the attack; another set held them in restraint.

"Be careful, dad!" he groaned. "Peter Cheever never met my wife."

"Well, then, what were you fighting him about?"

"That's my business."

"Well, it's my business, too, when I find the name of my son posted for expulsion on the board of my pet club. You used to be sweet on Cheever's wife. You weren't fighting about her, were you?"

This chance hit jolted the bridegroom so perceptibly that his father regretted having made it. He gasped:

"Great Lord, but you're the busy young man! Solomon in all his glory--"

"Let him alone now," Mrs. Dyckman broke in, "or you'll have me on your hands." She needed only her husband's hostility to inflame her in defense of her son. "If he's married, he's married, and words won't divorce him. We might as well make the best of it. I've no doubt the girl is a darling, or Jim wouldn't have cared for her. Would you, Jimsy?"

"Naturally not," Jim agreed, with a rather sickly enthusiasm.

"Is she nice-looking?"

"She is famous for her beauty."

"Famous! Oh, Heavens! That sounds ominous. You mean she's well known?"

"Very--in certain circles."

"In certain circles!" Mrs. Dyckman was like a terrified echo. She had known of such appalling misalliances that there was no telling how far her son might have descended.

Old Dyckman snarled, "Do you mean that you've gone slumming for a wife?"

Jim dared not answer this. His mother ignored it, too. But her thoughts were in a panic.

"What circles is she famous in, your wife, for her beauty?"

Jim could not achieve the awful word "movies" at the moment. He prowled round it.

"In professional circles."

"Oh, an actress, then?"

"Well, sort of."

"They call everything an actress nowadays. She isn't a--a chorus-girl or a show-girl?"

"Lord, no!" His indignation was rea.s.suring to a degree.

His father broke in again, "It might save a few hours of dodging and cross-examination if you'd tell us who and what she is."

"She is known professionally as Anita Adair."

So parochial a thing is fame that the t.i.tle which millions of people had learned to know and love meant absolutely nothing to the Dyckmans. They were so ignorant of the new arts that even Mary Pickford meant hardly more to them than Pica.s.so or Matisse.

Jim brought out a photograph of Kedzie, a small one that he carried in his pocket-book for company. The problem of what she looked like distracted attention for the moment from the problem of what she did and was.

Mrs. Dyckman took the picture and perused it anxiously. Her husband leaned over her shoulder and studied it, too. He was mollified and won by the big, gentle eyes and that bee-stung upper lip. He grumbled:

"Well, you're a good chooser for looks, anyway. Sweet little thing."

Mrs. Dyckman examined the face more knowingly. She saw in those big, innocent eyes a serene selfishness and a kind of sweet ruthlessness. In the pouting lips she saw discontent and a gift for wheedling. But all she said was, "She's a darling."

Jim caught the knell-tone in her praise and feared that Kedzie was dead to her already. He saw more elegy in her sigh of resignation to fate and her resolution to take up her cross--the mother's cross of a pretty, selfish daughter-in-law.

"You haven't told us yet how she won her--fame, you said."

And now Jim had to tell it.

"She has had great success in the--the--er--pictures."

"She's a painter--an ill.u.s.trator?"

"No, she--well--you know, the moving pictures have become very important; they're the fifth largest industry in the world, I believe, and--"

The silence of the parents was deafening. Their eyes rolled together and clashed, as it were, like cannon-b.a.l.l.s meeting. Dyckman senior dropped back into his chair and whistled "Whew!" Then he laughed a little:

"Well, I'm sure we should be proud of our alliance with the fifth largest industry. The Dyckmans are coming up in the world."

"Hush!" said Mrs. Dyckman. She was thinking of the laugh that rival mothers would have on her. She was thinking of the bitterness of her other children, of her daughter who was a d.u.c.h.ess in England, and of the squirming of her relatives-in-law. But she was too fond of her boy to mention her dreads. She pa.s.sed on to the next topic.

"Where are you living?"

"Nowhere yet," Jim confessed. "We just got in from our--er--honeymoon this morning. We haven't decided what to do."

Then Mrs. Dyckman took one of those heroic steps she was capable of.