All the years of their marriage she had been ever complaisant
toward him in his card-playing. This complaisance, to him, had
become habitual. But now that doubt had arisen, it seemed to him
that he noted an eagerness in her countenancing of his poker
parties. Another point he could not avoid noting was that Sonny
Grandison was missed by the poker and bridge crowds. He seemed to
be too busy. Now where was Sonny, while he, Lee Barton, was
playing? Surely not always at committee and boards of directors
meetings. Lee Barton made sure of this. He easily learned that at
such times Sonny was more than usually wherever Ida chanced to be--
at dances, or dinners, or moonlight swimming parties, or, the very
afternoon he had flatly pleaded rush of affairs as an excuse not to
join Lee and Langhorne Jones and Jack Holstein in a bridge battle
at the Pacific Club--that afternoon he had played bridge at Dora
Niles' home with three women, one of whom was Ida.
Returning, once, from an afternoon's inspection of the great dry-
dock building at Pearl Harbour, Lee Barton, driving his machine
against time, in order to have time to dress for dinner, passed
Sonny's car; and Sonny's one passenger, whom he was taking home,
was Ida.
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