,
shallow, busy with the sticks and straws; yet now there would creep in a
suspicion that some of the things he had forgiven to Lena's beauty and
lack of sophistication were close of kin to the older woman's more
blatant materialism. Materialism was the thing Dick had not learned to
associate with his own women.

This radiant morning, then, he felt himself under the dominion of the
grand inquisitors who invented the torture of little things. Life
consisted in having slow drops of water fall on his head, one at a time.
Family life was slimed with small bickerings, children were a nuisance,
society a bore, and the most beautiful woman in the world defiant and
uninspiring at the breakfast-table.

It does not take Cleopatra long to wither the ideals.

Dick began to analyze his wife, which is a dangerous thing for a man to
do. If a husband wishes to preserve the lover's state of mind, he must
continue to think of his wife as a single indivisible creature, not a
compound of faults, virtues and charms, lest in some unlucky moment he
find that the faults are the biggest ingredient.

Dick, however, was thinking, and the substance of his thoughts was that
this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if
he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his
mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer
persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet,
innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and
more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the
world in general she was still the big-eyed ingenue, learning to take
her place in society. To him alone, it seemed, to him whose love and
reverence she ought to have desired, she was becoming indifferent as to
the impression she made. Was the other side of her a pose? Dick found
himself walking very fast, and he slackened his pace to a respectable
gait. If Lena the lovable was a pose, then the inspiration and ideals
and joy of his life were frauds. That thought was too appalling. He
deliberately stopped thinking about it and turned his thoughts to frauds
in city politics, which were easier to endure.

Lena, on the other hand, sitting idly by the window, indulged in a
little reflection on her own part. She was revolving with some
bitterness her disappointment and disillusionment. She remembered what a
glorious gilded creature Dick had appeared to her at one time. Now he