all I call for you?"

"Half-past one."

She opened the door for him, and held out her hand. Their eyes did not
meet as they said good-bye. The door closed, and Waymark went so slowly
down the stone steps that he seemed at every moment on the point of
stopping and turning back.

CHAPTER XX

A SUGGESTION

Waymark and Julian Casti were sitting together in the former's room. It
was Saturday evening--two days after Waymark's visit to Ida. Julian had
fallen into a sad reverie.

"How is your wife?" asked his friend, after watching the melancholy
face for a while.

"She said her headache was worse to-night."

"Curiously," observed Waymark, with a little acidity, "it always is
when you have to leave home."

Julian looked up, and seemed to reach a crisis in his thoughts.

"Waymark," he began, reddening as he still always did when greatly
moved, "I fear I have been behaving very foolishly. Many a time I have
wished to speak out to you plainly, but a sort of delicacy--a wrong
kind of delicacy, I think--prevented me. I can't keep this attitude any
longer. I must tell you how things are going on, and you must give me
what help you can. And perhaps I shall be telling you what you already
know?"

"I have suspected."

"Where is the blame?" Julian broke out, with sudden vehemence. "I
cannot think that ever husband was more patient and more indulgent than
I have been. I have refused her nothing that my means could possibly
obtain. I have given up all the old quiet habits of my life that she
mightn't think I slighted her; I scarcely ever open a book at home,
knowing that it irritates her to see me reading; I do my best to amuse
her at all times. How does she reward me? For ever she grumbles that I
can't perform impossibilities,--take her to theatres, buy her new
dresses, procure for her friends and acquaintances. My wishes,
expressed or understood, weigh with her less than the least of her own
caprices. She wantonly does things which she knows will cause me
endless misery. Her companions are gross and depraved people, who
constantly drag her lower and lower, to their own level. The landlady
has told me that, in my absence, women have called to see her who
certainly ought not to enter any decent house. When I entreat her to
give up such associates, her only answer is to accuse me of
selfishness, since I have friends myself, and yet won't permit her to
have any. And things have gone from bad to worse. Several nights