she again broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything
you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou"
the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim
of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a
return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that
one instance, to follow fashion.

She added, seeing that he still did not speak, "I am lunching with my
sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the
chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to
be on the defensive when speaking to her husband.

Jacques de Wissant frowned. He did not like either of his wife's
sisters, neither the one who was now lying ill in Italy, nor his widowed
sister-in-law, Madeleine Baudoin. In the villa which she had hired for
the summer, and which stood on a lonely stretch of beach beyond the bay,
Madeleine often entertained the officers of the submarine flotilla, and
this, from her brother-in-law's point of view, was very far from
"correct" conduct on the part of one who could still pass as a young
widow.

In response to his frown there had come a slight, mocking smile on
Claire's face.

"I suppose you are on your way to some important town function?"

She disliked the town of Falaise, the town-folk bored her, and she hated
the vast old family house in the Market Place, where she had to spend
each winter.

"To-day is the fourteenth of August," observed Jacques de Wissant in his
deliberate voice; "and I have a great many marriages to celebrate this
morning."

"Yes, I suppose that is so." And again Claire de Wissant spoke with the
courteous indifference, the lack of interest in her husband's concerns,
which she had early schooled him to endure.

But all at once there came a change in her voice, in her manner. "Why
to-day--the fourteenth of August--is our wedding day! How stupid of me
to forget! We must tell Jacqueline and Clairette. It will amuse
them----"

She uttered the words a little breathlessly, and as she spoke, Jacques
de Wissant walked quickly forward into the room. As he did so his wife
moved abruptly away from where she had been standing, thus maintaining
the distance between them.

But Claire de Wissant need not have been afraid; her husband had his own
strict code of manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He
possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had