ough my life. No; here I've gone on
right enough, with a tolerably even mind; and for that very reason I
haven't noticed any signs of the other thing in you--till just now,
when you lost your head. Why haven't you been frank with me?'

'You take it for granted that I had anything to be frank about,' Alma
remarked.

'Yes--and you don't contradict me.'

'Then what were you going to say, Harvey?'

She bent towards him, with that air of sweet reasonableness which
showed her features at their best: eye tranquil and intelligent, lips
ingenuously smiling; a countenance she wore not thrice in a
twelvemonth, but by Harvey well remembered amid all changes, and held
to express the true being of the woman he loved.

'Why, I was going to say, dear,' he replied tenderly, 'that no good can
come of sacrificing your instincts. You have not to ask yourself
whether I am lazily comfortable--for that's what it amounts to--but
what you are making of your life. Remember, for one thing, that I am
considerably older----'

'Please!' She checked him with an extended hand. 'I don't want to
remember anything of the kind.'

'There's no harm in it, I hope.' He laughed a little. 'The difference
isn't distressing, but just enough to be taken into account. At forty,
or near it, a man who is happily married gets used to his slippers and
his pipe--especially if comfort, and all the rest of it, have come
after half a lifetime of homelessness. I might often say to myself that
I was wasting time, rusting, and so on; but the next day I should fall
back into the easy-chair again, and hate the thought of changes. But
you, with thirty still far ahead, slippers and pipe have no particular
attraction for you.'

He saw a thought in her eyes, and paused.

'Hughie will soon be able to talk,' fell from Alma, her look no longer
that of ingenuous sweetness, but of virtue just a trifle
self-conscious. And her husband, though he read this meaning in the
change, was yet pleased by the words that accompanied it.

'Yes; and then there will be more for you to do, you were going to say.
But that won't occupy you entirely, and it doesn't bind you to any
particular spot.'

'Perhaps not.'

She had become almost demure. Harvey took his eyes away.

'It comes to this--you're not to subordinate your life to mine. That's
the old idea, and it still works well with some people. Yet I don't
know; perhaps it doesn't, really; one knows little enough about
people's lives.