awkward as ever, he still wrote
post-cards to his aunt in Fall River, and admired burlesque-show
choruses, but he no longer played the mouth-organ (publicly), for he
had become so well-to-do as to be respectable. As foreign agent for
the Des Moines Auto-Truck Company he had toured Europe, selling
war-trucks, or lorries, as the English called them, first to the
Balkan States, then to Italy, Russia, and Turkey. He was for a time
detailed to the New York office.

It did not occur either to him nor to Carl that he was not "welcome to
drop in any time; often as possible," to slap Carl on the back, loudly
recollect the time when he had got drunk and fought with a policeman
in San Antonio, or to spend a whole evening belligerently discussing
the idea of war or types of motor-trucks when Ruth wistfully wanted
Carl to herself. Martin supposed, because she smiled, that she was as
interested as Carl in his theories about aeroplane-scouting in war.

Ruth knew that most of Carl's life had been devoted to things quite
outside her own sphere of action, but she had known it without feeling
it. His talk with Martin showed her how sufficient his life had been
without her. She began to worry lest he go back to aviation.

So began their serious quarrels; there were not many of them, and they
were forgotten out of existence in a day or two; but there were at
least three pitched battles during which both of them believed that
"this ended everything." They quarreled always about the one thing
which had intimidated them before--the need of quarreling; though
apropos of this every detail of life came up: Ruth's conformities; her
fear that he would fly again; her fear that the wavering job was
making him indecisive.

And Martin Dockerill kept coming, as an excellent starting-point for
dissension.

Ruth did not dislike Martin's roughness, but when the ex-mechanic
discovered that he was making more money than was Carl, and asked
Carl, in her presence, if he'd like a loan, then she hated Martin, and
would give no reason. She became unable to see him as anything but a
boor, an upstart servant, whose friendship with Carl indicated that
her husband, too, was an "outsider." Believing that she was superbly
holding herself in, she asked Carl if there was not some way of
tactfully suggesting to Martin that he come to the flat only once in
two weeks, instead of two or three times a week. Carl was angry. She
said furiously what she really thought, and