stwood caused her to keep her person rather showily arrayed, but to
Hurstwood this was much better than plainness. There was no love lost
between them. There was no great feeling of dissatisfaction. Her opinion
on any subject was not startling. They did not talk enough together
to come to the argument of any one point. In the accepted and popular
phrase, she had her ideas and he had his. Once in a while he would meet
a woman whose youth, sprightliness, and humour would make his wife seem
rather deficient by contrast, but the temporary dissatisfaction which
such an encounter might arouse would be counterbalanced by his social
position and a certain matter of policy. He could not complicate his
home life, because it might affect his relations with his employers.
They wanted no scandals. A man, to hold his position, must have
a dignified manner, a clean record, a respectable home anchorage.
Therefore he was circumspect in all he did, and whenever he appeared in
the public ways in the afternoon, or on Sunday, it was with his wife,
and sometimes his children. He would visit the local resorts, or those
near by in Wisconsin, and spend a few stiff, polished days strolling
about conventional places doing conventional things. He knew the need of
it.

When some one of the many middle-class individuals whom he knew, who had
money, would get into trouble, he would shake his head. It didn't do to
talk about those things. If it came up for discussion among such friends
as with him passed for close, he would deprecate the folly of the thing.
"It was all right to do it--all men do those things--but why wasn't he
careful? A man can't be too careful." He lost sympathy for the man that
made a mistake and was found out.

On this account he still devoted some time to showing his wife
about--time which would have been wearisome indeed if it had not been
for the people he would meet and the little enjoyments which did not
depend upon her presence or absence. He watched her with considerable
curiosity at times, for she was still attractive in a way and men
looked at her. She was affable, vain, subject to flattery, and this
combination, he knew quite well, might produce a tragedy in a woman of
her home position. Owing to his order of mind, his confidence in the sex
was not great. His wife never possessed the virtues which would win the
confidence and admiration of a man of his nature. As long as she loved
him vigorously he could see how confide