he had rebuked Trixton Brent
more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again
she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would
have laid herself open to his ridicule. The lion was often unwittingly
rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.

If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might
have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent. That
gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly
hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should offer
her husband a position merely to please her. And her imagination failed
her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust
company. She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:

This tram of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his
character. For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept into
her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful man--even
among men. For all his self-confidence-self-assurance, perhaps, would be
the better word--he was in reality a follower, not a leader; a gleaner.
He did not lack ideas. She tried to arrest the process in her brain when
she got as far as asking herself whether it might not be that he lacked
ideals. Since in business matters he never had taken her into his
confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such
things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one or two vague remarks
of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she
should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.

When she heard her husband's footstep on the porch, she put out her
light, but still lay thinking in the darkness. Her revelations had
arrived at the uncomfortable stage where they began to frighten her, and
with an effort she forced herself to turn to the other side of the
account. The hour was conducive to exaggerations. Perfection in husbands
was evidently a state not to be considered by any woman in her right
senses. He was more or less amenable, and he was prosperous, although
definite news of that prosperity never came from him--Quicksands always
knew of it first. An instance of this second-hand acquisition of
knowledge occurred the very next morning, when Lily Dallam, with much
dignity, walked into Honora's little sitting-room. There was no apparent
reason why dignity should not have been becoming to L