of
nothing but the new house, and most of her suggestions were good.
He often wished she would ask for something unreasonable and
extravagant. But she had no selfish whims, and even insisted that
the comfortable upstairs sleeping room he had planned with such
care should be reserved for a guest chamber.

As the house began to take shape, Enid came up often in her car,
to watch its growth, to show Claude samples of wallpapers and
draperies, or a design for a window-seat she had cut from some
magazine. There could be no question of her pride in every
detail. The disappointing thing was that she seemed more
interested in the house than in him. These months when they could
be together as much as they pleased, she treated merely as a
period of time in which they were building a house.

Everything would be all right when they were married, Claude told
himself. He believed in the transforming power of marriage, as
his mother believed in the miraculous effects of conversion.
Marriage reduced all women to a common denominator; changed a
cool, self-satisfied girl into a loving and generous one. It
was quite right that Enid should be unconscious now of everything
that she was to be when she was his wife. He told himself he
wouldn't want it otherwise.

But he was lonely, all the same. He lavished upon the little
house the solicitude and cherishing care that Enid seemed not to
need. He stood over the carpenters urging the greatest nicety in
the finish of closets and cupboards, the convenient placing of
shelves, the exact joining of sills and casings. Often he stayed
late in the evening, after the workmen with their noisy boots had
gone home to supper. He sat down on a rafter or on the skeleton
of the upper porch and quite lost himself in brooding, in
anticipation of things that seemed as far away as ever. The dying
light, the quiet stars coming out, were friendly and sympathetic.
One night a bird flew in and fluttered wildly about among the
partitions, shrieking with fright before it darted out into the
dusk through one of the upper windows and found its way to
freedom.

When the carpenters were ready to put in the staircase, Claude
telephoned Enid and asked her to come and show them just what
height she wanted the steps made. His mother had always had to
climb stairs that were too steep. Enid stopped her car at the
Frankfort High School at four o'clock and persuaded Gladys Farmer
to drive out with her.

When they arrived