a new question was in
her heart. Was it as a husband--that he loved her? Did their intercourse
have that intangible quality of safety that belonged to married life? And
was it not as a mistress rather than a wife that, in their isolation, she
watched his moods so jealously? A mistress! Her lips parted, and she
repeated the word aloud, for self-torture is human.

Her mind dwelt upon their intercourse. There were the days they spent
together, and the evenings, working or reading. Ah, but had the time ever
been when, in the depths of her being, she had felt the real security of
a wife? When she had not always been dimly conscious of a desire to
please him, of a struggle to keep him interested and contented? And there
were the days when he rode alone, the nights when he read or wrote alone,
when her joy was turned to misery; there were the alternating periods of
passion and alienation. Alienation, perhaps, was too strong a word.
Nevertheless, at such times, her feeling was one of desolation.

His heart, she knew, was bent upon success at Grenoble, and one of the
books which they had recently read together was a masterly treatise, by
an Englishman, on the life-work of an American statesman. The vast width
of the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was stirred with
politics: a better era was coming, the pulse of the nation beating with
renewed life; a stronger generation was arising to take the Republic into
its own hands. A campaign was in progress in the State, and twice her
husband had gone some distance to hear the man who embodied the new
ideas, and had come back moody and restless, like a warrior condemned to
step aside. Suppose his hopes were blighted--what would happen? Would the
spirit of reckless adventure seize him again? Would the wilds call him?
or the city? She did not dare to think.

It was not until two mornings later that Hugh tossed her across the
breakfast table a pink envelope with a wide flap and rough edges. Its
sender had taken advantage of the law that permits one-cent stamps for
local use.

"Who's your friend, Honora?" he asked.

She tried to look calmly at the envelope that contained her fate.

"It's probably a dressmaker's advertisement," she answered, and went on
with the pretence of eating her breakfast.

"Or an invitation to dine with Mrs. Simpson," he suggested, laughingly,
as he rose. "It's just the stationery she would choose."

Honora dropped her spoon in her egg-cup. It insta