gold-topped
objects in the rack at her elbow. It was restful to be swept through the
crowded streets in this smooth fashion, and Clare's presence at his side
gave him a vague sense of ease.

For a long time now feminine nearness had come to mean to him, not
this relief from tension, but the ever-renewed dread of small daily
deceptions, evasions, subterfuges. The change had come gradually, marked
by one disillusionment after another; but there had been one moment that
formed the point beyond which there was no returning. It was the moment,
a month or two before his boy's birth, when, glancing over a batch of
belated Paris bills, he had come on one from the jeweller he had once
found in private conference with Undine. The bill was not large, but two
of its items stood out sharply. "Resetting pearl and diamond pendant.
Resetting sapphire and diamond ring." The pearl and diamond pendant was
his mother's wedding present; the ring was the one he had given Undine
on their engagement. That they were both family relics, kept unchanged
through several generations, scarcely mattered to him at the time: he
felt only the stab of his wife's deception. She had assured him in Paris
that she had not had her jewels reset. He had noticed, soon after their
return to New York, that she had left off her engagement-ring; but the
others were soon discarded also, and in answer to his question she had
told him that, in her ailing state, rings "worried" her. Now he saw she
had deceived him, and, forgetting everything else, he went to her, bill
in hand. Her tears and distress filled him with immediate contrition.
Was this a time to torment her about trifles? His anger seemed to
cause her actual physical fear, and at the sight he abased himself in
entreaties for forgiveness. When the scene ended she had pardoned him,
and the reset ring was on her finger...

Soon afterward, the birth of the boy seemed to wipe out these
humiliating memories; yet Marvell found in time that they were not
effaced, but only momentarily crowded out of sight. In reality, the
incident had a meaning out of proportion to its apparent seriousness,
for it put in his hand a clue to a new side of his wife's character. He
no longer minded her having lied about the jeweller; what pained him was
that she had been unconscious of the wound she inflicted in destroying
the identity of the jewels. He saw that, even after their explanation,
she still supposed he was angry only because s