t the Maitlands' house, and
did over the Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house--some
day."

"Why not right away?" asked Howard.

"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied.
"We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."

"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a
feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.

Honora sprang to her feet.

"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for
dinner-and you'll never be ready."

"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands
proposition. Let's talk it over a little more--"

"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But--remember my
ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."

"For my own good!"

"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and
obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married
me," she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that
disturbing and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a
wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she
disappeared into her room and closed the door.

We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with
commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on
which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in
no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other
people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock,
but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during
the week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss
the subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his
foot like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.

Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate
man was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had
laboured under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what
they had been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether
he had ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered
the troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if
we may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast,
had been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she
had contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that