ry quietly. 'If the books won't
bring enough, there's my watch--oh, lots of things.'

He turned abruptly away, and Amy went on with her household work.

CHAPTER X. THE FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY

It was natural that Amy should hint dissatisfaction with the loneliness
in which her days were mostly spent. She had never lived in a large
circle of acquaintances; the narrowness of her mother's means restricted
the family to intercourse with a few old friends and such new ones as
were content with teacup entertainment; but her tastes were social,
and the maturing process which followed upon her marriage made her more
conscious of this than she had been before. Already she had allowed her
husband to understand that one of her strongest motives in marrying
him was the belief that he would achieve distinction. At the time
she doubtless thought of his coming fame only--or principally--as it
concerned their relations to each other; her pride in him was to be one
phase of her love. Now she was well aware that no degree of distinction
in her husband would be of much value to her unless she had the pleasure
of witnessing its effect upon others; she must shine with reflected
light before an admiring assembly.

The more conscious she became of this requirement of her nature, the
more clearly did she perceive that her hopes had been founded on an
error. Reardon would never be a great man; he would never even occupy
a prominent place in the estimation of the public. The two things, Amy
knew, might be as different as light and darkness; but in the grief of
her disappointment she would rather have had him flare into a worthless
popularity than flicker down into total extinction, which it almost
seemed was to be his fate.

She knew so well how 'people' were talking of him and her. Even her
unliterary acquaintances understood that Reardon's last novel had been
anything but successful, and they must of course ask each other how
the Reardons were going to live if the business of novel-writing proved
unremunerative. Her pride took offence at the mere thought of such
conversations. Presently she would become an object of pity; there would
be talk of 'poor Mrs Reardon.' It was intolerable.

So during the last half year she had withheld as much as possible from
the intercourse which might have been one of her chief pleasures. And to
disguise the true cause she made pretences which were a satire upon her
state of mind--alleging that she had de