k her aid in escaping
the Herringtons and, indeed, was suddenly balky at the thought of the
intimacies of a domestic evening--_what_ was she thinking? She was not
such an imbecile as to be unaware how large a share of her comfortable
fortune was invested in the local industry. Why, her father had been
head of the Livingston Loomis-Ladd Collar Company, when that dreadful
fire--! And she certainly knew that his uncle, Martin Jaffry, was the
chief stockholder in the Jaffry-Bradshaw Company.

What was the question in Genevieve's eyes? Was she asking if he were the
knight of those women who worked and sweated and burned, or of her and
the comfortable women of her class, of Alys Brewster-Smith with
her little cottages, of Cousin Emelene with her little stocks, of
masquerading Betty Sheridan whose sortie of independence was from the
safe vantage-grounds of entrenched privilege?

And all that evening as he watched his wife across the crystal and the
roses of the Herrington table, trying to interpret the question that had
been in her eyes, trying to interpret her careful silence, he realized
what every husband sooner or later awakes to realize--that he had
married a stranger.

He did not know her. He did not know what ambitions, what aspirations
apart from him, ruled the spirit behind that charming surface of flesh.

Of course she was good, of course she was tender, of course she was
high-minded! But how wide-enveloping was the cloak of her goodness?
How far did her tenderness reach out? Was her high-mindedness of the
practical or impractical variety?

From time to time, he caught her eyes in turn upon him, with that
curious little look of re-examination in their depths. She could look at
him like that! She could look at him as though appraisals were possible
from a wife to a husband!

They avoided industrial Whitewater County as a topic when they left
the Herrington's. They talked with great animation and interest of the
people at the party. Arrived at home, George, pleading press of work,
went down into the library while Genevieve went to bed. Carefully they
postponed the moment of making articulate all that, remaining unspoken,
might be ignored.

It was one o'clock and he had not moved a paper for an hour, when the
library door opened.

Genevieve stood there. She had sometimes come before when he had worked
at night, to chide him for neglecting sleep, to bring bouillon or
chocolate. But tonight she did neither.

S