matters which she
considered practical. She did not include the business of bread-winning
in these; that was an affair that might safely be left to his
absent-minded, dreamy inefficiency, and she did not interfere with
him there. But in such things as rehanging the pictures, deciding on
a summer boarding-place, taking a seaside cottage, repapering rooms,
choosing seats at the theatre, seeing what the children ate when she was
not at table, shutting the cat out at night, keeping run of calls and
invitations, and seeing if the furnace was dampered, he had failed her
so often that she felt she could not leave him the slightest discretion
in regard to a flat. Her total distrust of his judgment in the matters
cited and others like them consisted with the greatest admiration of his
mind and respect for his character. She often said that if he would only
bring these to bear in such exigencies he would be simply perfect; but
she had long given up his ever doing so. She subjected him, therefore,
to an iron code, but after proclaiming it she was apt to abandon him
to the native lawlessness of his temperament. She expected him in
this event to do as he pleased, and she resigned herself to it with
considerable comfort in holding him accountable. He learned to expect
this, and after suffering keenly from her disappointment with whatever
he did he waited patiently till she forgot her grievance and began to
extract what consolation lurks in the irreparable. She would almost
admit at moments that what he had done was a very good thing, but she
reserved the right to return in full force to her original condemnation
of it; and she accumulated each act of independent volition in witness
and warning against him. Their mass oppressed but never deterred him. He
expected to do the wrong thing when left to his own devices, and he did
it without any apparent recollection of his former misdeeds and their
consequences. There was a good deal of comedy in it all, and some
tragedy.

He now experienced a certain expansion, such as husbands of his kind
will imagine, on going back to his hotel alone. It was, perhaps, a
revulsion from the pain of parting; and he toyed with the idea of Mrs.
Grosvenor Green's apartment, which, in its preposterous unsuitability,
had a strange attraction. He felt that he could take it with less risk
than anything else they had seen, but he said he would look at all the
other places in town first. He really spent the greater