n I married him. If standards were
permanent I suppose happy matings would be less unusual. A young couple
must have something in common in order to respond at all to each other's
attractions, but as they grow older they set up different standards, and
they drift apart."

She paused, and Grant sat in silence, watching the glow of the firelight
upon her cheek.

"Why don't you smoke?" she exclaimed, suddenly springing up. "Let me
find you some of Frank's cigars."

Grant protested that he smoked too much. She produced a box of cigars
and extended them to him. Then she held a match while he got his light.

"Your standards have changed?" said Grant, taking up the thread when she
had sat down again.

"They have. They have changed more than Frank's, which makes me feel
rather at fault in the matter. How could he know that I would change my
ideal of what a husband should be?"

"Why shouldn't he know? That is the course of development. Without
changing ideals there would be stagnation."

"Perhaps," she returned, and he thought he caught a note of weariness
in her voice. "But I don't blame Frank--now. I rather blame him then.
He swept me off my feet; stampeded me. My parents helped him, and I was
only half disposed to resist. You see, I had this other matter on my
mind, and for the first time in my life I felt the need of protection.
Besides, I took a matter-of-fact view of marriage. I thought that
sentiment--love, if you like--was a thing of books, an invention of
poets and fiction writers. Practical people would be practical in their
marriages, as in their other undertakings. To marry Frank seemed a very
practical course. My father assured me that Frank had in him qualities
of large success. He would make money; he would be a prominent man in
circles of those who do things. These predictions he has fulfilled.
Frank has been all I expected--then."

"But you have changed your opinion of marriage--of the essentials of
marriage?"

"Do YOU need to ask that? I was beginning to see the light--beginning to
know myself--even before I married him, but I didn't stop to analyze.
I plunged ahead, as I have always done, trusting not to get into any
position from which I could not find a way out. But there are some
positions from which there is no way out."

Grant reflected that possibly his experience had been somewhat like hers
in that respect. He, too, had been following a path, unconcerned about
its end.... Possibly for him,