I would not permit him. He has wanted to go, but I held him here, hard as it was on both of you, in order to have you together, to compare you two, to weigh you in my heart. And I get nowhere. I want you both. I can’t give either of you up.”

“Unfortunately, as you see,” Dick began, a slight twinkle in his eyes, “while you may be polyandrously inclined, we stupid male men cannot reconcile ourselves to such a situation.”

“Don’t be cruel, Dick,” she protested.

“Forgive me. It was not so meant. It was out of my own hurt — an effort to bear it with philosophical complacence.”

“I have told him that he was the only man I had ever met who is as great as my husband, and that my husband is greater.”