iles and no particular
beauty; and he had stooped, in his strength and tenderness, to make her
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, as she had become. And he had
become bone of _her_ bone and flesh of _her_ flesh. She was no more his
than he was hers. That was the great fact. She was no longer content
with the limited formula, "They twain shall be one flesh"; they twain
had become one spirit and one life.

It was while asserting this to herself, not for the first time, that she
saw him start. He started back from the window--the large central
window--to which he had gone, probably with vague thoughts of the
weather, like herself. It was the manner of his start that chiefly
attracted her attention. After drawing back he peered forward. It was
an absurd thing to think of him; she knew that--of him of all
people!--but one would almost have said that, in his own house, he
shrank from being seen. But there was the fact. There was his
attitude--his tiptoeing--his way of leaning toward the mantelpiece at an
angle from which he could see what was going on in the Park and yet be
protected by the curtain.

Then it came to her, with a flush that made her tingle all over, that
she was spying on him. He thought her in the children's room up-stairs,
when all the while she was watching him in a mirror. Never in her life
had she known such a rush of shame. Bending her head, she scribbled
blindly, "dinner on Tuesday evening the twenty-fourth at--" She was
compelled by an inner force she didn't understand to glance up at the
mirror again, but, to her relief, he had gone.

Later she heard him at the telephone. To avoid all appearance of
listening she went to the kitchen to give her orders for the day. On her
return he was in the hall, dressed for going out. Scanning his face, she
thought he looked suddenly care-worn.

"I've ordered a motor to take me downtown," he explained, as he pulled
on his gloves. He generally took the street-car in Madison Avenue.

"Aren't you well?" she thought it permissible to ask.

"Oh yes; I'm all right."

"Then why--?"

He made an effort to be casual: "Well, I just thought I would."

She had decided not to question him--it was a matter of honor or pride
with her, she was not sure which--but while giving him the note to post
she ventured to say, "You're not worried about anything, are you?"

"Not in the least." He seemed to smother the words by stooping to kiss
her good-by.

She followed him t