imself because his
wife thought he could do no wrong. The power of doing wrong is, after
all, a power, and George had a feeling of having lost that power and
of being in a negative way wronged. Finally he spoke crossly to Lily
over his newspaper.

"Why do you stick so to that everlasting fancy-work?" said he. "Why
on earth don't you sometimes run out of an evening? You never go into
the next house nowadays."

Lily arose directly.

"We will go over there now if you wish," said she. She laid down her
work and smoothed her hair with her doll-like gesture, which never
varied.

George looked at her surlily and irresolutely.

"No, I guess we had better not to-night," he said.

"I had just as lief, dear."

George rose, letting his paper slide to the floor.

"Well," he said, "they are all out on the front door-step, and I
think some of the neighbors are there, too. We might run over a
moment. It is too hot to stay in the house, anyway."

But when George and Lily came alongside the Stillman house the
laughter was hushed, and there was a light in Aunt Maria's bedroom,
and lights also in the chambers behind the drawn curtains.

"We are too late," said George. "They have gone to bed."

"I think they have," replied Lily, looking up at the lighted bedroom
windows. Then she added, "I will go over there any evening you wish,
dear," and looked at him with that unfailing devotion which
unreasonably angered him.

He answered her quite roughly, and was ashamed of himself afterwards.

"It is a frightfully monotonous life we lead anyhow," said he, as if
she, Lily, were responsible for it.

"Suppose we go away a week somewhere next month," said Lily.

"Well, I'll think of it," said he, striding along by her side. Even
that suggestion, which was entirely reasonable, angered him, and he
felt furious and ashamed of himself for being so angered.

Lily was constantly making him ashamed of himself for not being a god
and for feeling unreasonable anger when she did nothing to provoke
it. Once in a while a man likes to have a reasonable cause for
resentment in order to prove himself in the right.

"Well, I am ready to go whenever you wish to do so, dear," said Lily.
"My wardrobe is in order."

"Well, we'll see," George grunted again, as he and Lily retraced
their steps.

They sat down again in the sitting-room, and Lily took up her
embroidery, and he read a murder case in his paper.

Meanwhile, Maria, after putting out her