s mind. An old habit
which had grown on him in the years of his prosperity of putting his
hand to his mouth and of opening his eyes in an assumption of surprise,
which had no basis in fact, now grew upon him. He really degenerated,
although he did not know it, into a mere automaton. Life strews its
shores with such interesting and pathetic wrecks.

One of the things that caused Cowperwood no little thought at this time,
and especially in view of his present extreme indifference to her, was
how he would bring up this matter of his indifference to his wife and
his desire to end their relationship. Yet apart from the brutality of
the plain truth, he saw no way. As he could plainly see, she was now
persisting in her pretense of devotion, uncolored, apparently, by any
suspicion of what had happened. Yet since his trial and conviction, she
had been hearing from one source and another that he was still intimate
with Aileen, and it was only her thought of his concurrent woes, and the
fact that he might possibly be spared to a successful financial life,
that now deterred her from speaking. He was shut up in a cell, she said
to herself, and she was really very sorry for him, but she did not love
him as she once had. He was really too deserving of reproach for his
general unseemly conduct, and no doubt this was what was intended, as
well as being enforced, by the Governing Power of the world.

One can imagine how much such an attitude as this would appeal to
Cowperwood, once he had detected it. By a dozen little signs, in spite
of the fact that she brought him delicacies, and commiserated on his
fate, he could see that she felt not only sad, but reproachful, and if
there was one thing that Cowperwood objected to at all times it was
the moral as well as the funereal air. Contrasted with the cheerful
combative hopefulness and enthusiasm of Aileen, the wearied uncertainty
of Mrs. Cowperwood was, to say the least, a little tame. Aileen, after
her first burst of rage over his fate, which really did not develop any
tears on her part, was apparently convinced that he would get out and
be very successful again. She talked success and his future all the time
because she believed in it. Instinctively she seemed to realize that
prison walls could not make a prison for him. Indeed, on the first day
she left she handed Bonhag ten dollars, and after thanking him in her
attractive voice--without showing her face, however--for his obvious
kindne