Part 57

“It's rough, Jack”--the speaker paused, with a match in his hand--“it's rough. I'll be if she was not the finest woman I ever knew.”

My wife and I were sitting in the orchestra stalls of the Metropolitan. The opera was Siegfried. At the close of the first act, as we turned to the house, we saw Carmen enter a box, radiant, in white. Henderson followed, and took a seat a little in shadow behind her. There were others in the box. There was a little movement and flutter as they came in and glasses were turned that way.

“Married, and it is only two years,” I said.

“It is only a year and eight months,” my wife replied.

And the world goes on as cheerfully and prosperously as ever.