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+Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5376]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 3 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!
+
+It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room
+of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung
+Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy
+who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence
+was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless
+possibilities lay ahead.
+
+The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were
+moments of retrospection--as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm,
+walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had
+she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of
+its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale,
+Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who was to be
+her husband. She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing reciting the
+words of that wonderful introduction. At other weddings she had been
+moved. Why was her own so unrealizable?
+
+   "Honora, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live
+   together after God's ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt
+   thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness
+   and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him,
+   so long as ye both shall live?"
+
+She had promised. And they were walking out of the church, facing the
+great rose window with its blended colours, and the vaults above were
+ringing now with the volume of an immortal march.
+
+After that an illogical series of events and pictures passed before her.
+She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at her
+husband, who had kissed her passionately. He was there beside her,
+looking extremely well in his top hat and frock-coat, with a white flower
+in his buttonhole. He was the representative of the future she had
+deliberately chosen. And yet, by virtue of the strange ceremony through
+which they had passed, he seemed to have changed. In her attempt to seize
+upon a reality she looked out of the window. They were just passing the
+Hanbury mansion in Wayland Square, and her eyes fell upon the playroom
+windows under the wide cornice; and she wondered whether the doll's house
+were still in its place, its mute inhabitants waiting to be called by the
+names she had given them, and quickened into life once more.
+
+Next she recalled the arrival at the little house that had been her home,
+summer and winter, for so many years of her life. A red and white awning,
+stretching up the length of the walk which once had run beside the tall
+pear trees, gave it an unrecognizable, gala air. Long had it stood there,
+patient, unpretentious, content that the great things should pass it by!
+And now, modest still, it had been singled out from amongst its
+neighbours and honoured. Was it honoured? It seemed to Honora, so
+fanciful this day, that its unwonted air of festival was unnatural. Why
+should the hour of departure from such a harbour of peace be celebrated?
+
+She was standing beside her husband in the little parlour, while carriage
+doors slammed in the dusk outside; while one by one--a pageant of the
+past which she was leaving forever the friends of her childhood came and
+went. Laughter and tears and kisses! And then, in no time at all, she
+found herself changing for the journey in the "little house under the
+hill." There, locked up in the little desk Cousin Eleanor had given her
+long ago, was the unfinished manuscript of that novel written at fever
+heat during those summer days in which she had sought to escape from a
+humdrum existence. And now--she had escaped. Aunt Mary, helpful under the
+most trying circumstances, was putting her articles in a bag, the
+initials on which she did not recognize--H. L. S.--Honora Leffingwell
+Spence; while old Catherine, tearful and inefficient, knelt before her,
+fumbling at her shoes. Honora, bending over, took the face of the
+faithful old servant and kissed it.
+
+"Don't feel badly, Catherine," she said; "I'll be coming back often to
+see you, and you will be coming to see me."
+
+"Will ye, darlint? The blessing of God be on you for those words--and you
+to be such a fine lady! It always was a fine lady ye were, with such a
+family and such a bringin' up. And now ye've married a rich man, as is
+right and proper. If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none too good
+for you."
+
+"Catherine," said Aunt Mary, reprovingly, "what ideas you put into the
+child's head!"
+
+"Sure, Miss Mary," cried Catherine, "it's always the great lady she was,
+and she a wee bit of a thing. And wasn't it yerself, Miss Mary, that
+dressed her like a princess?"
+
+Then came the good-bys--the real ones. Uncle Tom, always the friend of
+young people, was surrounded by a group of bridesmaids in the hall. She
+clung to him. And Peter, who had the carriage ready. What would her
+wedding have been without Peter? As they drove towards the station, his
+was the image that remained persistently in her mind, bareheaded on the
+sidewalk in the light of the carriage lamps. The image of struggle.
+
+She had married Prosperity. A whimsical question, that shocked her,
+irresistibly presented itself: was it not Prosperity that she had
+promised to love, honour, and obey?
+
+It must not be thought that Honora was by any means discontented with her
+Prosperity. He was new--that was all. Howard looked new. But she
+remembered that he had always looked new; such was one of his greatest
+charms. In the long summer days since she had bade him good-by on her way
+through New York from Silverdale, Honora had constructed him: he was
+perpetual yet sophisticated Youth; he was Finance and Fashion; he was
+Power in correctly cut clothes. And when he had arrived in St. Louis to
+play his part in the wedding festivities, she had found her swan a swan
+indeed--he was all that she had dreamed of him. And she had tingled with
+pride as she introduced him to her friends, or gazed at him across the
+flower-laden table as he sat beside Edith Hanbury at the bridesmaids'
+dinner in Wayland Square.
+
+The wedding ceremony had somehow upset her opinion of him, but Honora
+regarded this change as temporary. Julius Caesar or George Washington
+himself must have been somewhat ridiculous as bridegrooms: and she had
+the sense to perceive that her own agitations as a bride were partly
+responsible. No matter how much a young girl may have trifled with that
+electric force in the male sex known as the grand passion, she shrinks
+from surrendering herself to its dominion. Honora shrank. He made love to
+her on the way to the station, and she was terrified. He actually forgot
+to smoke cigarettes. What he said was to the effect that he possessed at
+last the most wonderful and beautiful woman in the world, and she
+resented the implication of possession.
+
+Nevertheless, in the glaring lights of the station, her courage and her
+pride in him revived, and he became again a normal and a marked man.
+Although the sex may resent it, few women are really indifferent to
+clothes, and Howard's well-fitting check suit had the magic touch of the
+metropolis. His manner matched his garments. Obsequious porters grasped
+his pig-skin bag, and seized Honora's; the man at the gate inclined his
+head as he examined their tickets, and the Pullman conductor himself
+showed them their stateroom, and plainly regarded them as important
+people far from home. Howard had the cosmopolitan air. He gave the man a
+dollar, and remarked that the New Orleans train was not exactly the
+Chicago and New York Limited.
+
+"Not by a long shot," agreed the conductor, as he went out, softly
+closing the door behind him.
+
+Whereupon the cosmopolitan air dropped from Mr. Howard Spence, not
+gracefully, and he became once more that superfluous and awkward and
+utterly banal individual, the husband.
+
+"Let's go out and walk on the platform until the train starts," suggested
+Honora, desperately. "Oh, Howard, the shades are up! I'm sure I saw some
+one looking in!"
+
+He laughed. But there was a light in his eyes that frightened her, and
+she deemed his laughter out of place. Was he, after all, an utterly
+different man than what she had thought him? Still laughing, he held to
+her wrist with one hand, and with the other pulled down the shades.
+
+"This is good enough for me," he said. "At last--at last," he whispered,
+"all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself! Do you love me
+just a little, Honora?"
+
+"Of course I do," she faltered, still struggling, her face burning as
+from a fire.
+
+"Then what's the matter?" he demanded.
+
+"I don't know--I want air. Howard, please let me go. It's-it's so hot
+inhere. You must let me go."
+
+Her release, she felt afterwards, was due less to a physical than a
+mental effort. She seemed suddenly to have cowed him, and his resistance
+became enfeebled. She broke from him, and opened the door, and reached
+the cement platform and the cold air. When he joined her, there was
+something jokingly apologetic about his manner, and he was smoking a
+cigarette; and she could not help thinking that she would have respected
+him more if he had held her.
+
+"Women beat me," he said. "They're the most erratic stock in the market."
+
+It is worthy of remark how soon the human, and especially the feminine
+brain adjusts itself to new conditions. In a day or two life became real
+again, or rather romantic.
+
+For the American husband in his proper place is an auxiliary who makes
+all things possible. His ability to "get things done," before it ceases
+to be a novelty, is a quality to be admired. Honora admired. An
+intimacy--if the word be not too strong--sprang up between them. They
+wandered through the quaint streets of New Orleans, that most foreign of
+American cities, searching out the tumbledown French houses; and Honora
+was never tired of imagining the romances and tragedies which must have
+taken place in them. The new scenes excited her,--the quaint cafes with
+their delicious, peppery Creole cooking,--and she would sit talking for a
+quarter of an hour at a time with Alphonse, who outdid himself to please
+the palate of a lady with such allure. He called her "Madame"; but well
+he knew, this student of human kind, that the title had not been of long
+duration.
+
+Madame came from New York, without doubt? such was one of his questions,
+as he stood before them in answer to Howard's summons, rubbing his hands.
+And Honora, with a little thrill, acknowledged the accuracy of his guess.
+There was no dish of Alphonse's they did not taste. And Howard smilingly
+paid the bills. He was ecstatically proud of his wife, and although he
+did justice to the cooking, he cared but little for the mysterious
+courtyards, the Spanish buildings, and the novels of Mr. George W. Cable,
+which Honora devoured when she was too tired to walk about. He followed
+her obediently to the battle field of New Orleans, and admired as
+obediently the sunset, when the sky was all silver-green through the
+magnolias, and the spreading live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and a
+silver bar lay upon the Father of Waters. Honora, with beating heart and
+flushed cheeks, felt these things: Howard felt them through her and
+watched--not the sunset--but the flame it lighted in her eyes.
+
+He left her but twice a day, and then only for brief periods. He even
+felt a joy when she ventured to complain.
+
+"I believe you care more for those horrid stocks than for me," she said.
+"I--I am just a novelty."
+
+His answer, since they were alone in their sitting-room, was obvious.
+
+"Howard," she cried, "how mean of you! Now I'll have to do my hair all
+over again. I've got such a lot of it--you've no idea how difficult it
+is."
+
+"You bet I have!" he declared meaningly, and Honora blushed.
+
+His pleasure of possession was increased when people turned to look at
+her on the street or in the dining room--to think that this remarkable
+creature was in reality his wife! Nor did the feeling grow less intense
+with time, being quite the same when they arrived at a fashionable resort
+in the Virginia mountains, on their way to New York. For such were the
+exactions of his calling that he could spare but two weeks for his
+honeymoon.
+
+Honora's interest in her new surroundings was as great, and the sight of
+those towering ridges against the soft blue of the autumn skies inspired
+her. It was Indian summer here, the tang of wood smoke was in the air; in
+the valleys--as they drove--the haze was shot with the dust of gold, and
+through the gaps they looked across vast, unexplored valleys to other
+distant, blue-stained ridges that rose between them and the sunset.
+Honora took an infinite delight in the ramshackle cabins beside the
+red-clay roads, in the historic atmosphere of the ancient houses and
+porticoes of the Warm Springs, where the fathers of the Republic had come
+to take the waters. And one day, when a north wind had scattered the
+smoke and swept the sky, Howard followed her up the paths to the ridge's
+crest, where she stood like a Victory, her garments blowing, gazing off
+over the mighty billows to the westward. Howard had never seen a Victory,
+but his vision of domesticity was untroubled.
+
+Although it was late in the season, the old-fashioned, rambling hotel was
+well filled, and people interested Honora as well as scenery--a proof of
+her human qualities. She chided Howard because he, too, was not more
+socially inclined.
+
+"How can you expect me to be--now?" he demanded.
+
+She told him he was a goose, although secretly admitting the justice of
+his defence. He knew four or five men in the hotel, with whom he talked
+stocks while waiting for Honora to complete her toilets; and he gathered
+from two of these, who were married, that patience was a necessary
+qualification in a husband. One evening they introduced their wives.
+Later, Howard revealed their identity--or rather that of the husbands.
+
+"Bowker is one of the big men in the Faith Insurance Company, and Tyler
+is president of the Gotham Trust." He paused to light a cigarette, and
+smiled at her significantly. "If you can dolly the ladies along once in a
+while, Honora, it won't do any harm," he added. "You have a way with you,
+you know,--when you want to."
+
+Honora grew scarlet.
+
+"Howard!" she exclaimed.
+
+He looked somewhat shamefaced.
+
+"Well," he said, "I was only joking. Don't take it seriously. But it
+doesn't do any harm to be polite."
+
+"I am always polite," she answered a little coldly.
+
+Honeymoons, after all, are matters of conjecture, and what proportion of
+them contain disenchantments will never be known. Honora lay awake for a
+long time that night, and the poignant and ever recurring remembrance of
+her husband's remark sent the blood to her face like a flame. Would
+Peter, or George Hanbury, or any of the intimate friends of her childhood
+have said such a thing?
+
+A new and wistful feeling of loneliness was upon her. For some days, with
+a certain sense of isolation and a tinge of envy which she would not
+acknowledge, she had been watching a group of well-dressed, clean-looking
+people galloping off on horseback or filling the six-seated buckboards.
+They were from New York--that she had discovered; and they did not mix
+with the others in the hotel. She had thought it strange that Howard did
+not know them, but for a reason which she did not analyze she hesitated
+to ask him who they were. They had rather a rude manner of staring
+--especially the men--and the air of deriving infinite amusement from
+that which went on about them. One of them, a young man with a lisp who
+was addressed by the singular name of "Toots," she had overheard
+demanding as she passed: who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark
+hair and the colour? Wherever she went, she was aware of them. It was
+foolish, she knew, but their presence seemed--in the magnitude which
+trifles are wont to assume in the night-watches--of late to have poisoned
+her pleasure.
+
+Enlightenment as to the identity of these disturbing persons came, the
+next day, from an unexpected source. Indeed, from Mrs. Tyler. She loved
+brides, she said, and Honora seemed to her such a sweet bride. It was
+Mrs. Tyler's ambition to become thin (which was hitching her wagon to a
+star with a vengeance), and she invited our heroine to share her
+constitutional on the porch. Honora found the proceeding in the nature of
+an ordeal, for Mrs. Tyler's legs were short, her frizzled hair very
+blond, and the fact that it was natural made it seem, somehow, all the
+more damning.
+
+They had scarcely begun to walk before Honora, with a sense of dismay of
+which she was ashamed, beheld some of the people who had occupied her
+thoughts come out of the door and form a laughing group at the end of the
+porch. She could not rid herself of the feeling that they were laughing
+at her. She tried in vain to drive them from her mind, to listen to Mrs.
+Tyler's account of how she, too, came as a bride to New York from some
+place with a classical name, and to the advice that accompanied the
+narration. The most conspicuous young woman in the group, in riding
+clothes, was seated on the railing, with the toe of one boot on the
+ground. Her profile was clear-cut and her chestnut hair tightly knotted
+behind under her hat. Every time they turned, this young woman stared at
+Honora amusedly.
+
+"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Tyler, suddenly and unexpectedly in the
+midst of a description of the delights of life in the metropolis.
+
+"Who?" asked Honora.
+
+"That young Mrs. Freddy Maitland, sitting on the rail. She's the rudest
+woman in New York."
+
+A perversity of spirit which she could not control prompted Honora to
+reply:
+
+"Why, I think she is so good-looking, Mrs. Tyler. And she seems to have
+so much individuality and independence."
+
+"There!" cried Mrs. Tyler, triumphantly. "Once--not so very long ago--I
+was just as inexperienced as you, my dear. She belongs to that horribly
+fast set with which no self-respecting woman would be seen. It's an
+outrage that they should come to a hotel like this and act as though it
+belonged to them. She knows me quite as well as I know her, but when I am
+face to face she acts as though I was air."
+
+Honora could not help thinking that this, at least, required some
+imagination on Mrs. Maitland's part. Mrs. Tyler had stopped for breath.
+
+"I have been introduced to her twice," she continued, "but of course I
+wouldn't speak to her. The little man with the lisp, next to her, who is
+always acting in that silly way, they call Toots Cuthbert. He gets his
+name in the newspapers by leading cotillons in New York and Newport. And
+the tall, slim, blond one, with the green hat and the feather in it, is
+Jimmy Wing. He's the son of James Wing, the financier."
+
+"I went to school at Sutcliffe with his sister," said Honora.
+
+It seemed to Honora that Mrs. Tyler's manner underwent a change.
+
+"My dear," she exclaimed, "did you go to Sutcliffe? What a wonderful
+school it is! I fully intend to send my daughter Louise there."
+
+An almost irresistible desire came over Honora to run away. She excused
+herself instead, and hurried back towards her room. On the way she met
+Howard in the corridor, and he held a telegram in his hand.
+
+"I've got some bad news, Honora," he said. "That is, bad from the point
+of view of our honeymoon. Sid Dallam is swamped with business, and wants
+me in New York. I'm afraid we've got to cut it short."
+
+To his astonishment she smiled.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad, Howard," she cried. "I--I don't like this place nearly
+so well as New Orleans. There are--so many people here."
+
+He looked relieved, and patted her on the arm.
+
+"We'll go to-night, old girl," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"STAFFORD PARK"
+
+There is a terrifying aspect of all great cities. Rome, with its
+leviathan aqueducts, its seething tenements clinging to the hills, its
+cruel, shining Palatine, must have overborne the provincial traveller
+coming up from Ostia. And Honora, as she stood on the deck of the
+ferry-boat, approaching New York for the second time in her life, could
+not overcome a sense of oppression. It was on a sharp December morning,
+and the steam of the hurrying craft was dazzling white in the early sun.
+Above and beyond the city rose, overpowering, a very different city,
+somehow, than that her imagination had first drawn. Each of that
+multitude of vast towers seemed a fortress now, manned by Celt and Hun
+and, Israelite and Saxon, captained by Titans. And the strife between
+them was on a scale never known in the world before, a strife with modern
+arms and modern methods and modern brains, in which there was no mercy.
+
+Hidden somewhere amidst those bristling miles of masonry to the northward
+of the towers was her future home. Her mind dwelt upon it now, for the
+first time, and tried to construct it. Once she had spoken to Howard of
+it, but he had smiled and avoided discussion. What would it be like to
+have a house of one's own in New York? A house on Fifth Avenue, as her
+girl friends had said when they laughingly congratulated her and begged
+her to remember that they came occasionally to New York. Those of us who,
+like Honora, believe in Providence, do not trouble ourselves with mere
+matters of dollars and cents. This morning, however, the huge material
+towers which she gazed upon seemed stronger than Providence, and she
+thought of her husband. Was his fibre sufficiently tough to become
+eventually the captain of one of those fortresses, to compete with the
+Maitlands and the Wings, and others she knew by name, calmly and
+efficiently intrenched there?
+
+The boat was approaching the slip, and he came out to her from the cabin,
+where he had been industriously reading the stock reports, his newspapers
+thrust into his overcoat pocket.
+
+"There's no place like New York, after all," he declared, and added,
+"when the market's up. We'll go to a hotel for breakfast."
+
+For some reason she found it difficult to ask the question on her lips.
+
+"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, "I suppose we couldn't go--home,
+Howard. You--you have never told me where we are to live."
+
+As before, the reference to their home seemed to cause him amusement. He
+became very mysterious.
+
+"Couldn't you pass away a few hours shopping this morning, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Honora.
+
+"While I gather in a few dollars," he continued. "I'll meet you at lunch,
+and then we'll go-home."
+
+As the sun mounted higher, her spirits rose with it. New York, or that
+strip of it which is known to the more fortunate of human beings, is a
+place to raise one's spirits on a sparkling day in early winter. And
+Honora, as she drove in a hansom from shop to shop, felt a new sense of
+elation and independence. She was at one, now, with the prosperity that
+surrounded her: her purse no longer limited, her whims existing only to
+be gratified. Her reflections on this recently attained state alternated
+with alluring conjectures on the place of abode of which Howard had made
+such a mystery. Where was it? And why had he insisted, before showing it
+to her, upon waiting until afternoon?
+
+Newly arrayed in the most becoming of grey furs, she met him at that
+hitherto fabled restaurant which in future days--she reflected--was to
+become so familiar--Delmonico's. Howard was awaiting her in the
+vestibule; and it was not without a little quiver of timidity and
+excitement and a consequent rise of colour that she followed the waiter
+to a table by the window. She felt as though the assembled fashionable
+world was staring at her, but presently gathered courage enough to gaze
+at the costumes of the women and the faces of the men. Howard, with a
+sang froid of which she felt a little proud, ordered a meal for which he
+eventually paid a fraction over eight dollars. What would Aunt Mary have
+said to such extravagance? He produced a large bunch of violets.
+
+"With Sid Dallam's love," he said, as she pinned them on her gown. "I
+tried to get Lily--Mrs. Sid--for lunch, but you never can put your finger
+on her. She'll amuse you, Honora."
+
+"Oh, Howard, it's so much pleasanter lunching alone to-day. I'm glad you
+didn't. And then afterwards--?"
+
+He refused, however, to be drawn. When they emerged she did not hear the
+directions he gave the cabman, and it was not until they turned into a
+narrow side street, which became dingier and dingier as they bumped their
+way eastward, that she experienced a sudden sinking sensation.
+
+"Howard!" she cried. "Where are you going? You must tell me."
+
+"One of the prettiest suburbs in New Jersey--Rivington," he said. "Wait
+till you see the house."
+
+"Suburbs! Rivington! New Jersey!" The words swam before Honora's eyes,
+like the great signs she had seen printed in black letters on the tall
+buildings from the ferry that morning. She had a sickening sensation, and
+the odour of his cigarette in the cab became unbearable. By an ironic
+trick of her memory, she recalled that she had told the clerks in the
+shops where she had made her purchases that she would send them her
+address later. How different that address from what she had imagined it!
+
+"It's in the country!" she exclaimed.
+
+To lunch at Delmonico's for eight dollars and live in Rivington
+
+Howard appeared disturbed. More than that, he appeared astonished,
+solicitous.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Honora?" he asked. "I thought you'd like it.
+It's a brand new house, and I got Lily Dallam to furnish it. She's a
+wonder on that sort of thing, and I told her to go ahead--within reason.
+I talked it over with your aunt and uncle, and they agreed with me you'd
+much rather live out there for a few years than in a flat."
+
+"In a flat!" repeated Honora, with a shudder.
+
+"Certainly," he said, flicking his ashes out of the window. "Who do you
+think I am, at my age? Frederick T. Maitland, or the owner of the
+Brougham Building?"
+
+"But--Howard," she protested, "why didn't you talk it over with me?"
+
+"Because I wanted to surprise you," he replied. "I spent a month and a
+half looking for that house. And you never seemed to care. It didn't
+occur to me that you would care--for the first few years," he added, and
+there was in his voice a note of reproach that did not escape her. "You
+never seemed inclined to discuss business with me, Honora. I didn't think
+you were interested. Dallam and I are making money. We expect some day to
+be on Easy Street--so to speak--or Fifth Avenue. Some day, I hope, you
+can show some of these people the road. But just now what capital we have
+has to go into the business."
+
+Strangely enough, in spite of the intensity of her disappointment, she
+felt nearer to her husband in that instant than at any time since their
+marriage. Honora, who could not bear to hurt any one's feelings, seized
+his hand repentantly. Tears started in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Howard, I must seem to you very ungrateful," she cried. "It was such
+a--such a surprise. I have never lived in the country, and I'm sure it
+will be delightful--and much more healthful than the city. Won't you
+forgive me?"
+
+If he had known as much about the fluctuations of the feminine
+temperament as of those of stocks, the ease with which Honora executed
+this complete change of front might have disturbed him. Howard, as will
+be seen, possessed that quality which is loosely called good nature. In
+marriage, he had been told (and was ready to believe), the wind blew
+where it listed; and he was a wise husband who did not spend his time in
+inquiry as to its sources. He kissed her before he helped her out of the
+carriage. Again they crossed the North River, and he led her through the
+wooden ferry house on the New Jersey side to where the Rivington train
+was standing beside a platform shed.
+
+There was no parlour car. Men and women--mostly women--with bundles were
+already appropriating the seats and racks, and Honora found herself
+wondering how many of these individuals were her future neighbours. That
+there might have been an hysterical element in the lively anticipation
+she exhibited during the journey did not occur to Howard Spence.
+
+After many stops,--in forty-two minutes, to be exact, the brakeman
+shouted out the name of the place which was to be her home, and of which
+she had been ignorant that morning. They alighted at an old red railroad
+station, were seized upon by a hackman in a coonskin coat, and thrust
+into a carriage that threatened to fall to pieces on the frozen macadam
+road. They passed through a village in which Honora had a glimpse of the
+drug store and grocery and the Grand Army Hall; then came detached houses
+of all ages in one and two-acre plots some above the road, for the
+country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone,
+and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on
+which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone
+in a very new gutter on the right.
+
+"Here we are!" cried Howard, as he fished in his trousers pockets for
+money to pay the hackman.
+
+Honora looked around her. Stafford Park consisted of a wide centre-way of
+red gravel, not yet packed, with an island in its middle planted with
+shrubbery and young trees, the bare branches of which formed a black
+tracery against the orange-red of the western sky. On both sides of this
+centre-way were concrete walks, with cross-walks from the curbs to the
+houses. There were six of these--three on each side--standing on a raised
+terrace and about two hundred feet apart. Beyond them, to the northward,
+Stafford Park was still a wilderness of second-growth hardwood,
+interspersed with a few cedars.
+
+Honora's house, the first on the right, was exactly like the other five.
+If we look at it through her eyes, we shall find this similarity its main
+drawback. If we are a little older, however, and more sophisticated, we
+shall suspect the owner of Stafford Park and his architect of a design to
+make it appear imposing. It was (indefinite and much-abused term)
+Colonial; painted white; and double, with dormer windows of diagonal
+wood-surrounded panes in the roof. There was a large pillared porch on
+its least private side--namely, the front. A white-capped maid stood in
+the open doorway and smiled at Honora as she entered.
+
+Honora walked through the rooms. There was nothing intricate about the
+house; it was as simple as two times four, and really too large for her
+and Howard. Her presents were installed, the pictures and photograph
+frames and chairs, even Mr. Isham's dining-room table and Cousin
+Eleanor's piano. The sight of these, and of the engraving which Aunt Mary
+had sent on, and which all her childhood had hung over her bed in the
+little room at home, brought the tears once more to her eyes. But she
+forced them back bravely.
+
+These reflections were interrupted by the appearance of the little maid
+announcing that tea was ready, and bringing her two letters. One was from
+Susan Holt, and the other, written in a large, slanting, and angular
+handwriting, was signed Lily Dallam. It was dated from New York.
+
+"My dear Honora," it ran, "I feel that I must call you so, for Sid and
+Howard, in addition to being partners, are such friends. I hesitated so
+long about furnishing your house, my dear, but Howard insisted, and said
+he wished to surprise you. I am sending you this line to welcome you, and
+to tell you that I have arranged with the furniture people to take any or
+all things back that you do not like, and exchange them. After all, they
+will be out of date in a few years, and Howard and Sid will have made so
+much money by that time, I hope, that I shall be able to leave my
+apartment, which is dear, and you will be coming to town."
+
+Honora laid down the sheet, and began to tidy her hair before the glass
+of the highly polished bureau in her room. A line in Susan's letter
+occurred to her: "Mother hopes to see you soon. She asked me to tell you
+to buy good things which will last you all your life, and says that it
+pays."
+
+The tea-table was steaming in the parlour in front of the wood fire in
+the blue tiled fireplace. The oak floor reflected its gleam, and that of
+the electric lights; the shades were drawn; a slight odour of steam heat
+pervaded the place. Howard, smoking a cigarette, was reclining on a sofa
+that evidently was not made for such a purpose, reading the evening
+newspapers.
+
+"Well, Honora," he said, as she took her seat behind the tea-table, "you
+haven't told me how you like it. Pretty cosey, eh? And enough spare room
+to have people out over Sundays."
+
+"Oh, Howard, I do like it," she cried, in a desperate attempt--which
+momentarily came near succeeding to convince herself that she could have
+desired nothing more. "It's so sweet and clean and new--and all our own."
+
+She succeeded, at any rate, in convincing Howard. In certain matters, he
+was easily convinced.
+
+"I thought you'd be pleased when you saw it, my dear," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GREAT UNATTACHED
+
+It was the poet Cowper who sang of domestic happiness as the only bliss
+that has survived the Fall. One of the burning and unsolved questions of
+to-day is,--will it survive the twentieth century? Will it survive rapid
+transit and bridge and Woman's Rights, the modern novel and modern drama,
+automobiles, flying machines, and intelligence offices; hotel, apartment,
+and suburban life, or four homes, or none at all? Is it a weed that will
+grow anywhere, in a crevice between two stones in the city? Or is it a
+plant that requires tender care and the water of self-sacrifice? Above
+all, is it desirable?
+
+Our heroine, as may have been suspected, has an adaptable temperament.
+Her natural position is upright, but like the reed, she can bend
+gracefully, and yields only to spring back again blithely. Since this
+chronicle regards her, we must try to look at existence through her eyes,
+and those of some of her generation and her sex: we must give the four
+years of her life in Rivington the approximate value which she herself
+would have put upon it--which is a chapter. We must regard Rivington as a
+kind of purgatory, not solely a place of departed spirits, but of those
+which have not yet arrived; as one of the many temporary abodes of the
+Great Unattached.
+
+No philosophical writer has as yet made the attempt to define the change
+--as profound as that of the tadpole to the frog--between the lover and
+the husband. An author of ideals would not dare to proclaim that this
+change is inevitable: some husbands--and some wives are fortunate enough
+to escape it, but it is not unlikely to happen in our modern
+civilization. Just when it occurred in Howard Spence it is difficult to
+say, but we have got to consider him henceforth as a husband; one who
+regards his home as a shipyard rather than the sanctuary of a goddess; as
+a launching place, the ways of which are carefully greased, that he may
+slide off to business every morning with as little friction as possible,
+and return at night to rest undisturbed in a comfortable berth, to ponder
+over the combat of the morrow.
+
+It would be inspiring to summon the vision of Honora, in rustling
+garments, poised as the figurehead of this craft, beckoning him on to
+battle and victory. Alas! the launching happened at that grimmest and
+most unromantic of hours-ten minutes of eight in the morning. There was a
+period, indeterminate, when she poured out his coffee with wifely zeal; a
+second period when she appeared at the foot of the stairs to kiss him as
+he was going out of the door; a third when, clad in an attractive
+dressing-gown, she waved him good-by from the window; and lastly, a
+fourth, which was only marked by an occasional protest on his part, when
+the coffee was weak.
+
+"I'd gladly come down, Howard, if it seemed to make the least difference
+to you," said Honora. "But all you do is to sit with your newspaper
+propped up and read the stock reports, and growl when I ask you a polite
+question. You've no idea how long it makes the days out here, to get up
+early."
+
+"It seems to me you put in a good many days in town," he retorted.
+
+"Surely you don't expect me to spend all my time in Rivington!" she cried
+reproachfully; "I'd die. And then I am always having to get new cooks for
+you, because they can't make Hollandaise sauce like hotel chefs. Men have
+no idea how hard it is to keep house in the country,--I just wish you had
+to go to those horrid intelligence offices. You wouldn't stay in
+Rivington ten days. And all the good cooks drink."
+
+Howard, indeed, with the aid of the village policeman, had had to expel
+from his kitchen one imperious female who swore like a dock hand, and who
+wounded Honora to the quick by remarking, as she departed in durance,
+that she had always lived with ladies and gentlemen and people who were
+somebody. The incident had tended further to detract from the romance of
+the country.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the
+horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun. And there is generally an
+afterglow. In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions
+of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life
+was touched with a certain novelty. There was a new runabout and a horse
+which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her
+husband. On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long
+excursions, into the country--until the golf season began, when the
+lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed. But after a while certain male
+competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued. Sunday, after
+his pile of newspapers had religiously been disposed of, became a field
+day. Indeed, it is impossible, without a twinge of pity, to behold Howard
+taking root in Rivington, for we know that sooner or later he will be dug
+up and transplanted. The soil was congenial. He played poker on the train
+with the Rivington husbands, and otherwise got along with them famously.
+And it was to him an enigma--when occasionally he allowed his thoughts to
+dwell upon such trivial matters--why Honora was not equally congenial
+with the wives.
+
+There were, no doubt, interesting people in Rivington about whom many
+stories could be written: people with loves and fears and anxieties and
+joys, with illnesses and recoveries, with babies, but few grandchildren.
+There were weddings at the little church, and burials; there were dances
+at the golf club; there were Christmas trees, where most of the presents
+--like Honora's--came from afar, from family centres formed in a social
+period gone by; there were promotions for the heads of families, and
+consequent rejoicings over increases of income; there were movings; there
+were--inevitable in the ever grinding action of that remorseless law, the
+survival of the fittest--commercial calamities, and the heartrending
+search for new employment.
+
+Rivington called upon Honora in vehicles of all descriptions, in
+proportion to the improvidence or prosperity of the owners. And Honora
+returned the calls, and joined the Sewing Circle, and the Woman's
+Luncheon Club, which met for the purpose of literary discussion. In the
+evenings there were little dinners of six or eight, where the men talked
+business and the women house rent and groceries and gossip and the
+cheapest places in New York City to buy articles of the latest fashion.
+Some of them had actually built or were building houses that cost as much
+as thirty thousand dollars, with the inexplicable intention of remaining
+in Rivington the rest of their lives!
+
+Honora was kind to these ladies. As we know, she was kind to everybody.
+She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become
+her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in
+fashionable restaurants. Their range of discussion included babies and
+Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee. It would be
+interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers
+met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever
+to depart. The time and manner of this departure were matters to be
+determined in the future.
+
+It would be interesting to know, likewise, just at what period the
+intention of moving away from Rivington became fixed in Honora's mind.
+Honora circumscribed, Honora limited, Honora admitting defeat, and this
+chronicle would be finished. The gods exist somewhere, though many
+incarnations may, be necessary to achieve their companionship. And no
+prison walls loom so high as to appall our heroine's soul. To exchange
+one prison for another is in itself something of a feat, and an argument
+that the thing may be done again. Neither do the wise ones beat
+themselves uselessly against brick or stone. Howard--poor man!--is
+fatuous enough to regard a great problem as being settled once and for
+all by a marriage certificate and a benediction; and labours under the
+delusion that henceforth he may come and go as he pleases, eat his
+breakfast in silence, sleep after dinner, and spend his Sundays at the
+Rivington Golf Club. It is as well to leave him, at present, in blissful
+ignorance of his future.
+
+Our sympathies, however, must be with Honora, who has paid the price for
+heaven, and who discovers that by marriage she has merely joined the
+ranks of the Great Unattached. Hitherto it had been inconceivable to her
+that any one sufficiently prosperous could live in a city, or near it and
+dependent on it, without being socially a part of it. Most momentous of
+disillusions! With the exception of the Sidney Dallams and one or two
+young brokers who occasionally came out over Sunday, her husband had no
+friends in New York. Rivington and the Holt family (incongruous mixture)
+formed the sum total of her acquaintance.
+
+On Monday mornings in particular, if perchance she went to town, the huge
+signs which she read across the swamps, of breakfast foods and other
+necessaries, seemed, for some reason, best to express her isolation.
+Well-dressed, laughing people descended from omnibuses at the prettier
+stations, people who seemed all-sufficient to themselves; people she was
+sure she should like if only she knew them. Once the sight of her school
+friend, Ethel Wing, chatting with a tall young man, brought up a flood of
+recollections; again, in a millinery establishment, she came face to face
+with the attractive Mrs. Maitland whom she had seen at Hot Springs.
+Sometimes she would walk on Fifth Avenue, watching, with mingled
+sensations, the procession there. The colour, the movement, the sensation
+of living in a world where every one was fabulously wealthy, was at once
+a stimulation and a despair. Brougham after brougham passed, victoria
+after victoria, in which beautifully gowned women chatted gayly or sat
+back, impassive, amidst the cushions. Some of them, indeed, looked bored,
+but this did not mar the general effect of pleasure and prosperity. Even
+the people--well-dressed, too--in the hansom cabs were usually animated
+and smiling. On the sidewalk athletic, clear-skinned girls passed her,
+sometimes with a man, sometimes in groups of two and three, going in and
+out of the expensive-looking shops with the large, plate-glass windows.
+
+All of these women, apparently, had something definite to do, somewhere
+to go, some one to meet the very next, minute. They protested to
+milliners and dressmakers if they were kept waiting, and even seemed
+impatient of time lost if one by chance bumped into them. But Honora had
+no imperative appointments. Lily Dallam was almost sure to be out, or
+going out immediately, and seemed to have more engagements than any one
+in New York.
+
+"I'm so sorry, my dear," she would say, and add reproachfully: "why
+didn't you telephone me you were coming? If you had only let me know we
+might have lunched together or gone to the matinee. Now I have promised
+Clara Trowbridge to go to a lunch party at her house."
+
+Mrs. Dallam had a most convincing way of saying such things, and in spite
+of one's self put one in the wrong for not having telephoned. But if
+indeed Honora telephoned--as she did once or twice in her innocence--Lily
+was quite as distressed.
+
+"My dear, why didn't you let me know last night? Trixy Brent has given
+Lula Chandos his box at the Horse Show, and Lula would never, never
+forgive me if I backed out."
+
+Although she lived in an apartment--in a most attractive one, to be sure
+--there could be no doubt about it that Lily Dallam was fashionable. She
+had a way with her, and her costumes were marvellous. She could have made
+her fortune either as a dressmaker or a house decorator, and she bought
+everything from "little" men and women whom she discovered herself. It
+was a curious fact that all of these small tradespeople eventually became
+fashionable, too. Lily was kind to Honora, and gave her their addresses
+before they grew to be great and insolent and careless whether one
+patronized them or not.
+
+While we are confessing the trials and weaknesses of our heroine, we
+shall have to admit that she read, occasionally, the society columns of
+the newspapers. And in this manner she grew to have a certain familiarity
+with the doings of those favourites of fortune who had more delightful
+engagements than hours in which to fulfil them. So intimate was Lily
+Dallam with many of these Olympians that she spoke of them by their first
+names, or generally by their nicknames. Some two years after Honora's
+marriage the Dallams had taken a house in that much discussed colony of
+Quicksands, where sport and pleasure reigned supreme: and more than once
+the gown which Mrs. Sidney Dallam had worn to a polo match had been
+faithfully described in the public prints, or the dinners which she had
+given at the Quicksands Club. One of these dinners, Honora learned, had
+been given in honour of Mr. Trixton Brent.
+
+"You ought to know Trixy, Honora," Mrs. Dallam declared; "he'd be crazy
+about you."
+
+Time passed, however, and Mrs. Dallam made no attempt to bring about this
+most desirable meeting. When Honora and Howard went to town to dine with
+the Dallams, it was always at a restaurant, a 'partie carree'. Lily
+Dallam thought it dull to dine at home, and they went to the theatre
+afterwards--invariably a musical comedy. Although Honora did not care
+particularly for musical comedies, she always experienced a certain
+feverish stimulation which kept her wide awake on the midnight train to
+Rivington. Howard had a most exasperating habit of dozing in the corner
+of the seat.
+
+"You are always sleepy when I have anything interesting to talk to you
+about," said Honora, "or reading stock reports. I scarcely see anything
+at all of you."
+
+Howard roused himself.
+
+"Where are we now?" he asked.
+
+"Oh," cried Honora, "we haven't passed Hydeville. Howard, who is Trixton
+Brent?"
+
+"What about him?" demanded her husband.
+
+"Nothing--except that he is one of Lily's friends, and she said she knew
+--I should like him. I wish you would be more interested in people. Who
+is he?"
+
+"One of the best-known operators in the market," Howard answered, and his
+air implied that a lack of knowledge of Mr. Brent was ignorance indeed;
+"a daring gambler. He cornered cotton once, and raked in over a million.
+He's a sport, too."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"About forty-three."
+
+"Is he married?" inquired Honora.
+
+"He's divorced," said Howard. And she had to be content with so much of
+the gentleman's biography, for her husband relapsed into somnolence
+again. A few days later she saw a picture of Mr. Brent, in polo costume,
+in one of the magazines. She thought him good-looking, and wondered what
+kind of a wife he had had.
+
+Honora, when she went to town for the day, generally could be sure of
+finding some one, at least, of the Holt family at home at luncheon time.
+They lived still in the same house on Madison Avenue to which Aunt Mary
+and Uncle Tom had been invited to breakfast on the day of Honora's
+arrival in her own country. It had a wide, brownstone front, with a
+basement, and a high flight of steps leading up to the door. Within,
+solemnity reigned, and this effect was largely produced by the
+prodigiously high ceilings and the black walnut doors and woodwork. On
+the second floor, the library where the family assembled was more
+cheerful. The books themselves, although in black-walnut cases, and the
+sun pouring in, assisted in making this effect.
+
+Here, indeed, were stability and peace. Here Honora remade the
+acquaintance of the young settlement worker, and of the missionary, now
+on the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Here she charmed other friends and
+allies of the Holt family; and once met, somewhat to her surprise, two
+young married women who differed radically from the other guests of the
+house. Honora admired their gowns if not their manners; for they ignored
+her, and talked to Mrs. Holt about plans for raising money for the
+Working Girl's Relief Society.
+
+"You should join us, my dear," said Mrs. Holt; "I am sure you would be
+interested in our work."
+
+"I'd be so glad to, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, "if only I didn't live in
+the country."
+
+She came away as usual, feeling of having run into a cul de sac. Mrs.
+Holt's house was a refuge, not an outlet; and thither Honora directed her
+steps when a distaste for lunching alone or with some of her Rivington
+friends in the hateful, selfish gayety of a fashionable restaurant
+overcame her; or when her moods had run through a cycle, and an
+atmosphere of religion and domesticity became congenial.
+
+"Howard," she asked unexpectedly one evening, as he sat smoking beside
+the blue tiled mantel, "have you got on your winter flannels?"
+
+"I'll bet a hundred dollars to ten cents," he cried, "that you've been
+lunching with Mrs. Holt."
+
+"I think you're horrid," said Honora.
+
+Something must be said for her. Domestic virtue, in the face of such
+mocking heresy, is exceptionally difficult of attainment.
+
+Mrs. Holt had not been satisfied with Honora's and Susan's accounts of
+the house in Stafford Park. She felt called upon to inspect it. And for
+this purpose, in the spring following Honora's marriage, she made a
+pilgrimage to Rivington and spent the day. Honora met her at the station,
+and the drive homeward was occupied in answering innumerable questions on
+the characters, conditions, and modes of life of Honora's neighbours.
+
+"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, when they were seated before the fire
+after lunch, "I want you to feel that you can come to me for everything.
+I must congratulate you and Howard on being sensible enough to start your
+married life simply, in the country. I shall never forget the little
+house in which Mr. Holt and I began, and how blissfully happy I was." The
+good lady reached out and took Honora's hand in her own. "Not that your
+deep feeling for your husband will ever change. But men are more
+difficult to manage as they grow older, my dear, and the best of them
+require a little managing for their own good. And increased
+establishments bring added cares and responsibilities. Now that I am
+here, I have formed a very fair notion of what it ought to cost you to
+live in such a place. And I shall be glad to go over your housekeeping
+books with you, and tell you if you are being cheated as I dare say you
+are."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," Honora faltered, "I--I haven't kept any books. Howard
+just pays the bills."
+
+"You mean to say he hasn't given you any allowance!" cried Mrs. Holt,
+aghast. "You don't know what it costs to run this house?"
+
+"No," said Honora, humbly. "I never thought of it. I have no idea what
+Howard's income may be."
+
+"I'll write to Howard myself--to-night," declared Mrs. Holt.
+
+"Please don't, Mrs. Holt. I'll--I'll speak to him," said Honora.
+
+"Very well, then," the good lady agreed, "and I will send you one of my
+own books, with my own system, as soon as I get home. It is not your
+fault, my dear, it is Howard's. It is little short of criminal of him. I
+suppose this is one of the pernicious results of being on the Stock
+Exchange. New York is nothing like what it was when I was a girl--the
+extravagance by everybody is actually appalling. The whole city is bent
+upon lavishness and pleasure. And I am afraid it is very often the wives,
+Honora, who take the lead in prodigality. It all tends, my dear, to
+loosen the marriage tie--especially this frightful habit of dining in
+hotels and restaurants."
+
+Before she left Mrs. Holt insisted on going over the house from top to
+bottom, from laundry to linen closet. Suffice it to say that the
+inspection was not without a certain criticism, which must be passed
+over.
+
+"It is a little large, just for you and Howard, my dear," was her final
+comment. "But you are wise in providing for the future."
+
+"For the future?" Honora repeated.
+
+Mrs. Holt playfully pinched her cheek.
+
+"When the children arrive, my dear, as I hope they will--soon," she said,
+smiling at Honora's colour. "Sometimes it all comes back to me--my own
+joy when Joshua was a baby. I was very foolish about him, no doubt. Annie
+and Gwendolen tell me so. I wouldn't even let the nurse sit up with him
+when he was getting his teeth. Mercy!" she exclaimed, glancing at the
+enamelled watch on her gown,--for long practice had enabled her to tell
+the time upside down,--"we'll be late for the train, my dear."
+
+After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her
+window, looking out on the park. The afternoon sunlight had the silvery
+tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway
+was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a
+vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines;
+and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped
+along the strip of sidewalk.
+
+Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had
+spoken? It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking
+in her. Children! A home! Why was it that she did not want children? Why
+should such a natural longing be absent in her? Her mind went back to the
+days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their large
+families. She had always associated marriage with children--until she got
+married. And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the
+matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt's own experience of
+it: Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to
+her, it was faint and shadowy indeed? Why were not her spirit and her
+hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?
+
+The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora
+did not mention it to her husband. Circumstances were her excuse: he had
+had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked
+disinclination for the discussion of household matters. It was not until
+the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between
+them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually
+uncommunicative and morose. Just as electrical disturbances are said to
+be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain
+glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were
+synchronous with a depression in the market.
+
+"I wish you'd learn to go a little slow, Honora," he said one evening.
+"The bills are pretty stiff this month. You don't seem to have any idea
+of the value of money."
+
+"Oh, Howard," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause for breath, "how can
+you say such a thing, when I save you so much?"
+
+"Save me so much!" he echoed.
+
+"Yes. If I had gone to Ridley for this suit, he would have charged me two
+hundred dollars. I took such pains--all on your account--to find a little
+man Lily Dallam told me about, who actually made it for one hundred and
+twenty-five."
+
+It was typical of the unreason of his sex that he failed to be impressed
+by this argument.
+
+"If you go on saving that way," said he, "we'll be in the hands of a
+receiver by Christmas. I can't see any difference between buying one suit
+from Ridley--whoever he may be--and three from Lily Dallam's 'little
+man,' except that you spend more than three times as much money."
+
+"Oh, I didn't get three!--I never thought you could be so unjust, Howard.
+Surely you don't want me to dress like these Rivington women, do you?"
+
+"I can't see anything wrong with their clothes," he maintained.
+
+"And to think that I was doing it all to please you!" she cried
+reproachfully.
+
+"To please me!"
+
+"Who else? We-we don't know anybody in New York. And I wanted you to be
+proud of me. I've tried so hard and--and sometimes you don't even look at
+my gowns, and say whether you like them and they are all for you."
+
+This argument, at least, did not fail of results, combined as it was with
+a hint of tears in Honora's voice. Its effect upon Howard was peculiar
+--he was at once irritated, disarmed, and softened. He put down his
+cigarette--and Honora was on his knee! He could not deny her attractions.
+
+"How could you be so cruel, Howard?" she asked.
+
+"You know you wouldn't like me to be a slattern. It was my own idea to
+save money--I had a long talk about economy one day with Mrs. Holt. And
+you act as though you had such a lot of it when we're in town for dinner
+with these Rivington people. You always have champagne. If--if you're
+poor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another
+dinner gown."
+
+"You've ordered another dinner gown!"
+
+"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind. But if you're
+poor--"
+
+She had made a discovery--to reflect upon his business success was to
+touch a sensitive nerve.
+
+"I'm not poor," he declared. "But the bottom's dropped out of the market,
+and even old Wing is economizing. We'll have to put on the brakes for
+awhile, Honora."
+
+It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three
+visits to St. Louis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE NEW DOCTRINE
+
+This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine
+--spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented
+with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast
+finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark
+well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess,
+not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize
+a significance in the choice of her sex. And--another discovery!--she is
+not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French,
+clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are
+neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths--for she is
+a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is
+worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette,
+and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she
+were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they
+understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not
+to bring peace, but a sword.
+
+At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their
+fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband
+seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his
+"den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his
+dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a
+cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.
+
+"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so
+untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're
+getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the
+top of his head, "is a bald spot!"
+
+"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.
+
+"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his face.
+"For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more. I don't
+mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear--which is much worse.
+You've got to notice me once in a while. If you don't, I'll get another
+husband. That's what women do in these days, you know, when the one they
+have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently agreeable. I'm
+sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.
+
+He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the
+fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly
+idle. A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs
+--of silver fox--were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve
+afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled
+with the dusky shadows. Howard Spence experienced one of those startling,
+illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and
+self-absorbed husbands of his nation. Psychologists have a name for such
+a phenomenon. Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned,
+she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he
+had not, in truth, sufficiently prized. Absurd though it was, the
+possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.
+
+"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he
+admitted.
+
+"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back. "If
+I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get fat
+and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have
+married you--never, never, never! Oh, how young and simple and foolish I
+was! And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated
+that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a
+little idiot not--to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a
+hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"
+
+He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which
+had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.
+
+"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an
+amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her
+of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want or rather--you take
+it,--and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces--"
+
+"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem--which couldn't be
+much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no
+end of fun making money,--for you like to make money, and expect me to
+amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know
+enough to keep thin."
+
+He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.
+
+"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but
+you never broke loose this way before."
+
+"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone.
+I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you
+over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you
+cooks--and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any
+possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play
+the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except
+strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get
+married again."
+
+"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his
+breath.
+
+"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has
+something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting
+when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good
+deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the
+women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than
+they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon.
+She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be
+tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears
+--and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the
+making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."
+
+Her husband got up.
+
+"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."
+
+The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she
+would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of
+course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout
+the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly
+dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of
+determination he had never before heard--or, at least, noticed.
+
+There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a
+charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it.
+He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught
+her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.
+
+"Howard--you'll knock over the lamp--you'll ruin my gown--and then you'll
+have to buy me another. I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her
+head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's--it's an
+ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily
+Dallam's tea--I won't tell you who they were--who would be glad to marry
+me in a minute."
+
+He drew her down on the arm of his chair.
+
+"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think
+you've got to have one."
+
+"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be
+done with so narrow a front. It's all French, with mirrors and big white
+panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got
+for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors
+give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two
+criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely
+turn around in it without knocking something down--a photograph frame or
+a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous,
+old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie
+Farwell could have made anything out of it."
+
+"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.
+
+"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell?
+Lily was so lucky to get him--she says he wouldn't have done the house if
+he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this
+afternoon--only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't.
+She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the
+Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house--some day."
+
+"Why not right away?" asked Howard.
+
+"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied.
+"We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."
+
+"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a
+feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.
+
+Honora sprang to her feet.
+
+"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for
+dinner-and you'll never be ready."
+
+"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition.
+Let's talk it over a little more--"
+
+"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But--remember my
+ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."
+
+"For my own good!"
+
+"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and
+obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married me,"
+she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing
+and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save
+you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she disappeared
+into her room and closed the door.
+
+We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with
+commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on
+which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in
+no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other
+people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock,
+but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the
+week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the
+subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot
+like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.
+
+Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man
+was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured
+under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had
+been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether he had
+ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the
+troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we
+may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had
+been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had
+contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that
+ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask
+himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at
+Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which
+had as yet eluded him. And, above all,--if the idea be put a little more
+crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the
+realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected.
+Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he
+insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might
+some day pack up and leave him. One never could tell what a woman would
+do in these days. Les sacrees femmes.
+
+We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental
+processes. She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of
+his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom. With
+instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.
+
+An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a
+day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there. Although Lily
+had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of
+unusual warmth. She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much
+to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting
+headache. In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the
+evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's
+front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock. Honora paused in the
+spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously
+from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement
+kitchens. The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across
+the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the
+tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and
+driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And
+out of it burst a resplendent lady--Mrs. Dallam.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry. But I just
+couldn't help it. It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault. She insisted on my
+staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady
+Emmeline. She's sweet. I've seen her eight times." Here she took Honora's
+arm, and faced her towards the street. "What do you think of my turnout?
+Isn't he a darling?"
+
+"Is he--full grown?" asked Honora.
+
+Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.
+
+"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,--although I had a terrible time finding
+him. I mean the horse. Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went abroad."
+
+"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for
+him. My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with
+me! He's crazy about Lula Chandos. I tried so hard to get her to come to
+dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea
+how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so
+we've got just ourselves."
+
+Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad,
+when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.
+
+"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a
+song. As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could
+do was to give me the brougham and the harness. Is Master Sid asleep?"
+she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door. "I
+meant to have got home in time to kiss him."
+
+She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature
+boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked
+superciliously down from the walls.
+
+"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora? You were such a
+success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about
+you, and why they hadn't heard of you. My dear, how much did little
+Harris charge you for that dress? If I had your face and neck and figure
+I'd die before I'd live in Rivington. You're positively wasted, Honora.
+And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as
+beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."
+
+"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.
+
+"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful. Sid
+says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who is
+wonderful. How do you like this dress?"
+
+"All your things are exquisite."
+
+"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.
+
+Honora, indeed, had not perjured herself. Only the hypercritical, when
+Mrs. Dallam was dressed, had the impression of a performed miracle. She
+was the most finished of finished products. Her complexion was high and
+(be it added) natural, her hair wonderfully 'onduled', and she had withal
+the sweetest and kindest of smiles and the most engaging laughter in the
+world. It was impossible not to love her.
+
+"Howard," she cried, when a little later they were seated at the table,
+"how mean of you to have kept Honora in a dead and alive place like
+Rivington all these years! I think she's an angel to have stood it. Men
+are beyond me. Do you know what an attractive wife you've got? I've just
+been telling her that there wasn't a woman at my tea who compared with
+her, and the men were crazy about her."
+
+"That's the reason I live down there," proclaimed Howard, as he finished
+his first glass of champagne.
+
+"Honora," demanded Mrs. Dallam, ignoring his bravado, "why don't you take
+a house at Quicksands? You'd love it, and you'd look simply divine in a
+bathing suit. Why don't you come down?"
+
+"Ask Howard," replied Honora, demurely.
+
+"Well, Lily, I'll own up I have been considering it a little," that
+gentleman admitted with gravity. "But I haven't decided anything. There
+are certain drawbacks--"
+
+"Drawbacks!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "Drawbacks at Quicksands! I'd like to
+know what they are. Don't be silly, Howard. You get more for your money
+there than any place I know." Suddenly the light of an inspiration came
+into her eyes, and she turned to her husband. "Sid, the Alfred Fern house
+is for rent, isn't it?"
+
+"I think it must be, Lily," replied Mr. Dallam.
+
+"Sometimes I believe I'm losing my mind," declared Mrs. Dallam. "What an
+imbecile I was not to think of it! It's a dear, Honora, not five minutes
+from the Club, with the sweetest furniture, and they just finished it
+last fall. It would be positively wicked not to take it, Howard. They
+couldn't have failed more opportunely. I'm sorry for Alfred, but I always
+thought Louise Fern a little snob. Sid, you must see Alfred down town the
+first thing in the morning and ask him what's the least he'll rent it
+for. Tell him I wish to know."
+
+"But--my dear Lily--began Mr. Dallam apologetically.
+
+"There!" complained his wife, "you're always raising objections to my
+most charming and sensible plans. You act as though you wanted Honora and
+Howard to stay in Rivington."
+
+"My dear Lily!" he protested again. And words failing him, he sought by a
+gesture to disclaim such a sinister motive for inaction.
+
+"What harm can it do?" she asked plaintively. "Howard doesn't have to
+rent the house, although it would be a sin if he didn't. Find out the
+rent in the morning, Sid, and we'll all four go down on Sunday and look
+at it, and lunch at the Quicksands Club. I'm sure I can get out of my
+engagement at Laura Dean's--this is so important. What do you say,
+Honora?"
+
+"I think it would be delightful," said Honora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+QUICKSANDS
+
+To convey any adequate idea of the community familiarly known as
+Quicksands a cinematograph were necessary. With a pen we can only
+approximate the appearance of the shifting grains at any one time. Some
+households there were, indeed, which maintained a precarious though
+seemingly miraculous footing on the surface, or near it, going under for
+mere brief periods, only to rise again and flaunt men-servants in the
+face of Providence.
+
+There were real tragedies, too, although a casual visitor would never
+have guessed it. For tragedies sink, and that is the end of them. The
+cinematograph, to be sure, would reveal one from time to time, coming
+like a shadow across an endless feast, and gone again in a flash. Such
+was what might appropriately be called the episode of the Alfred Ferns.
+After three years of married life they had come, they had rented; the
+market had gone up, they had bought and built--upon the sands. The
+ancient farmhouse which had stood on the site had been torn down as
+unsuited to a higher civilization, although the great elms which had
+sheltered it had been left standing, in grave contrast to the twisted
+cedars and stunted oaks so much in evidence round about.
+
+The Ferns--or rather little Mrs. Fern--had had taste, and the new house
+reflected it. As an indication of the quality of imagination possessed by
+the owners, the place was called "The Brackens." There was a long porch
+on the side of the ocean, but a view of the water was shut off from it by
+a hedge which, during the successive ownerships of the adjoining
+property, had attained a height of twelve feet. There was a little toy
+greenhouse connecting with the porch (an "economy" indulged in when the
+market had begun to go the wrong way for Mr. Fern). Exile, although
+unpleasant, was sometimes found necessary at Quicksands, and even
+effective.
+
+Above all things, however, if one is describing Quicksands, one must not
+be depressing. That is the unforgiveable sin there. Hence we must touch
+upon these tragedies lightly.
+
+If, after walking through the entrance in the hedge that separated the
+Brackens from the main road, you turned to the left and followed a
+driveway newly laid out between young poplars, you came to a mass of
+cedars. Behind these was hidden the stable. There were four stalls, all
+replete with brass trimmings, and a box, and the carriage-house was made
+large enough for the break which Mr. Fern had been getting ready to buy
+when he had been forced, so unexpectedly, to change his mind.
+
+If the world had been searched, perhaps, no greater contrast to Rivington
+could have been found than this delightful colony of quicksands, full of
+life and motion and colour, where everybody was beautifully dressed and
+enjoying themselves. For a whole week after her instalment Honora was in
+a continual state of excitement and anticipation, and the sound of wheels
+and voices on the highroad beyond the hedge sent her peeping to her
+curtains a dozen times a day. The waking hours, instead of burdens, were
+so many fleeting joys. In the morning she awoke to breathe a new,
+perplexing, and delicious perfume--the salt sea breeze stirring her
+curtains: later, she was on the gay, yellow-ochre beach with Lily Dallam,
+making new acquaintances; and presently stepping, with a quiver of fear
+akin to delight, into the restless, limitless blue water that stretched
+southward under a milky haze: luncheon somewhere, more new acquaintances,
+and then, perhaps, in Lily's light wood victoria to meet the train of
+trains. For at half-past five the little station, forlorn all day long in
+the midst of the twisted cedars that grew out of the heated sand, assumed
+an air of gayety and animation. Vehicles of all sorts drew up in the open
+space before it, wagonettes, phaetons, victorias, high wheeled hackney
+carts, and low Hempstead carts: women in white summer gowns and veils
+compared notes, or shouted invitations to dinner from carriage to
+carriage. The engine rolled in with a great cloud of dust, the horses
+danced, the husbands and the overnight guests, grimy and brandishing
+evening newspapers, poured out of the special car where they had sat in
+arm-chairs and talked stocks all the way from Long Island City. Some were
+driven home, it is true; some to the beach, and others to the Quicksands
+Club, where they continued their discussions over whiskey-and-sodas
+until it was time to have a cocktail and dress for dinner.
+
+Then came the memorable evening when Lily Dallam gave a dinner in honour
+of Honora, her real introduction to Quicksands. It was characteristic of
+Lily that her touch made the desert bloom. Three years before Quicksands
+had gasped to hear that the Sidney Dallams had bought the Faraday house
+--or rather what remained of it.
+
+"We got it for nothing," Lily explained triumphantly on the occasion of
+Honora's first admiring view. "Nobody would look at it, my dear."
+
+It must have been this first price, undoubtedly, that appealed to Sidney
+Dallam, model for all husbands: to Sidney, who had had as much of an idea
+of buying in Quicksands as of acquiring a Scotch shooting box. The
+"Faraday place" had belonged to the middle ages, as time is reckoned in
+Quicksands, and had lain deserted for years, chiefly on account of its
+lugubrious and funereal aspect. It was on a corner. Two "for rent" signs
+had fallen successively from the overgrown hedge: some fifty feet back
+from the road, hidden by undergrowth and in the tenebrous shades of huge
+larches and cedars, stood a hideous, two-storied house with a mansard
+roof, once painted dark red.
+
+The magical transformation of all this into a sunny, smiling, white villa
+with red-striped awnings and well-kept lawns and just enough shade had
+done no little towards giving to Lily Dallam that ascendency which she
+had acquired with such startling rapidity in the community. When Honora
+and Howard drove up to the door in the deepening twilight, every window
+was a yellow, blazing square, and above the sound of voices rose a waltz
+from "Lady Emmeline" played with vigour on the piano. Lily Dallam greeted
+Honora in the little room which (for some unexplained reason) was known
+as the library, pressed into service at dinner parties as the ladies'
+dressing room.
+
+"My dear, how sweet you look in that coral! I've been so lucky to-night,"
+she added in Honora's ear; "I've actually got Trixy Brent for you."
+
+Our heroine was conscious of a pleasurable palpitation as she walked with
+her hostess across the little entry to the door of the drawing-room,
+where her eyes encountered an inviting and vivacious scene. Some ten or a
+dozen guests, laughing and talking gayly, filled the spaces between the
+furniture; an upright piano was embedded in a corner, and the lady who
+had just executed the waltz had swung around on the stool, and was
+smiling up at a man who stood beside her with his hand in his pocket. She
+was a decided brunette, neither tall nor short, with a suggestion of
+plumpness.
+
+"That's Lula Chandos," explained Lily Dallam in her usual staccato,
+following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped
+mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the
+sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that
+she's crazy about him, do you? He's standing beside her."
+
+Honora took a good look at the famous Trixy, who resembled a certain type
+of military Englishman. He had close-cropped hair and a close-cropped
+mustache; and his grey eyes, as they rested amusedly on Mrs. Chandos,
+seemed to have in them the light of mockery.
+
+"Trixy!" cried his hostess, threading her way with considerable skill
+across the room and dragging Honora after her, "Trixy, I want to
+introduce you to Mrs. Spence. Now aren't you glad you came!"
+
+It was partly, no doubt, by such informal introductions that Lily Dallam
+had made her reputation as the mistress of a house where one and all had
+such a good time. Honora, of course, blushed to her temples, and
+everybody laughed--even Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"Glad," said Mr. Brent, with his eyes on Honora, "does not quite express
+it. You usually have a supply of superlatives, Lily, which you might have
+drawn on."
+
+"Isn't he irrepressible?" demanded Lily Dallam, delightedly, "he's always
+teasing."
+
+It was running through Honora's mind, while Lily Dallam's characteristic
+introductions of the other guests were in progress, that "irrepressible"
+was an inaccurate word to apply to Mr. Brent's manner. Honora could not
+define his attitude, but she vaguely resented it. All of Lily's guests
+had the air of being at home, and at that moment a young gentleman named
+Charley Goodwin, who was six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds,
+was loudly demanding cocktails. They were presently brought by a rather
+harassed-looking man-servant.
+
+"I can't get over how well you look in that gown, Lula," declared Mrs.
+Dallam, as they went out to dinner. "Trixy, what does she remind you of?"
+
+"Cleopatra," cried Warry Trowbridge, with an attempt to be gallant.
+
+"Eternal vigilance," said Mr. Brent, and they sat down amidst the
+laughter, Lily Dallam declaring that he was horrid, and Mrs. Chandos
+giving him a look of tender reproach. But he turned abruptly to Honora,
+who was on his other side.
+
+"Where did you drop down from, Mrs. Spence?" he inquired.
+
+"Why do you take it for granted that I have dropped?" she asked sweetly.
+
+He looked at her queerly for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
+
+"Because you are sitting next to Lucifer," he said. "It's kind of me to
+warn you, isn't it?"
+
+"It wasn't necessary," replied Honora. "And besides, as a dinner
+companion, I imagine Lucifer couldn't be improved on."
+
+He laughed again.
+
+"As a dinner companion!" he repeated. "So you would limit Lucifer to
+dinners? That's rather a severe punishment, since we're neighbours."
+
+"How delightful to have Lucifer as one's neighbour," said Honora,
+avoiding his eyes. "Of course I've been brought up to believe that he was
+always next door, so to speak, but I've never--had any proof of it until
+now."
+
+"Proof!" echoed Mr. Brent. "Has my reputation gone before me?"
+
+"I smell the brimstone," said Honora.
+
+He derived, apparently, infinite amusement from this remark likewise.
+
+"If I had known I was to have the honour of sitting here, I should have
+used another perfume," he replied. "I have several."
+
+It was Honora's turn to laugh.
+
+"They are probably for--commercial transactions, not for ladies," she
+retorted. "We are notoriously fond of brimstone, if it is not too strong.
+A suspicion of it."
+
+Her colour was high, and she was surprised at her own vivacity. It seemed
+strange that she should be holding her own in this manner with the
+renowned Trixton Brent. No wonder, after four years of Rivington, that
+she tingled with an unwonted excitement.
+
+At this point Mr. Brent's eye fell upon Howard, who was explaining
+something to Mrs. Trowbridge at the far end of the table.
+
+"What's your husband like?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+Honora was a little taken aback, but recovered sufficiently to retort:
+"You'd hardly expect me to give you an unprejudiced judgment."
+
+"That's true," he agreed significantly.
+
+"He's everything," added Honora, "that is to be expected in a husband."
+
+"Which isn't much, in these days," declared Mr. Brent.
+
+"On the contrary," said Honora.
+
+"What I should like to know is why you came to Quicksands," said Mr.
+Brent.
+
+"For a little excitement," she replied. "So far, I have not been
+disappointed. But why do you ask that question?" she demanded, with a
+slight uneasiness. "Why did you come here?"
+
+"Oh," he said, "you must remember that I'm--Lucifer, a citizen of the
+world, at home anywhere, a sort of 'freebooter. I'm not here all the
+time--but that's no reflection on Quicksands. May I make a bet with you,
+Mrs. Spence?"
+
+"What about?"
+
+"That you won't stay in Quicksands more than six months," he answered.
+
+"Why do you say that?" she asked curiously.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"My experience with your sex," he declared enigmatically, "has not been a
+slight one."
+
+"Trixy!" interrupted Mrs. Chandos at this juncture, from his other side,
+"Warry Trowbridge won't tell me whether to sell my Consolidated Potteries
+stock."
+
+"Because he doesn't know," said Mr. Brent, laconically, and readdressed
+himself to Honora, who had, however, caught a glimpse of Mrs. Chandos'
+face.
+
+"Don't you think it's time for you to talk to Mrs. Chandos?" she asked.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Well, for one reason, it is customary, out of consideration for the
+hostess, to assist in turning the table."
+
+"Lily doesn't care," he said.
+
+"How about Mrs. Chandos? I have an idea that she does care."
+
+He made a gesture of indifference.
+
+"And how about me?" Honora continued. "Perhaps--I'd like to talk to Mr.
+Dallam."
+
+"Have you ever tried it?" he demanded.
+
+Over her shoulder she flashed back at him a glance which he did not
+return. She had never, to tell the truth, given her husband's partner
+much consideration. He had existed in her mind solely as an obliging
+shopkeeper with whom Lily had unlimited credit, and who handed her over
+the counter such things as she desired. And to-night, in contrast to
+Trixton Brent, Sidney Dallam suggested the counter more than ever before.
+He was about five and forty, small, neatly made, with little hands and
+feet; fast growing bald, and what hair remained to him was a jet black.
+His suavity of manner and anxious desire to give one just the topic that
+pleased had always irritated Honora.
+
+Good shopkeepers are not supposed to have any tastes, predilections, or
+desires of their own, and it was therefore with no little surprise that,
+after many haphazard attempts, Honora discovered Mr, Dallam to be
+possessed by one all-absorbing weakness. She had fallen in love, she
+remarked, with little Sid on the beach, and Sidney Dallam suddenly became
+transfigured. Was she fond of children? Honora coloured a little, and
+said "yes." He confided to her, with an astonishing degree of feeling,
+that it had been the regret of his life he had not had more children.
+Nobody, he implied, who came to his house had ever exhibited the proper
+interest in Sid.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, leaning towards her confidentially, "I slip
+upstairs for a little peep at him after dinner."
+
+"Oh," cried Honora, "if you're going to-night mayn't I go with you? I'd
+love to see him in bed."
+
+"Of course I'll take you," said Sidney Dallam, and he looked at her so
+gratefully that she coloured again.
+
+"Honora," said Lily Dallam, when the women were back in the drawing-room,
+"what did you do to Sid? You had him beaming--and he hates dinner
+parties."
+
+"We were talking about children," replied Honora, innocently.
+
+"Children!"
+
+"Yes," said Honora, "and your husband has promised to take me up to the
+nursery."
+
+"And did you talk to Trixy about children, too?" cried Lily, laughing,
+with a mischievous glance at Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"Is he interested in them?" asked Honora.
+
+"You dear!" cried Lily, "you'll be the death of me. Lula, Honora wants to
+know whether Trixy is interested in children."
+
+Mrs. Chandos, in the act of lighting a cigarette, smiled sweetly.
+
+"Apparently he is," she said.
+
+"It's time he were, if he's ever going to be," said Honora, just as
+sweetly.
+
+Everybody laughed but Mrs. Chandos, who began to betray an intense
+interest in some old lace in the corner of the room.
+
+"I bought it for nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Dallam, but she pinched
+Honora's arm delightedly. "How wicked of you!" she whispered, "but it
+serves her right."
+
+In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other
+people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new
+to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.
+
+"How silly of you, Sid!" exclaimed his wife; "of course she doesn't want
+to go."
+
+"Indeed I do," protested Honora, rising with alacrity and following her
+host up the stairs. At the end of a hallway a nurse, who had been reading
+beside a lamp, got up smilingly and led the way on tiptoe into the
+nursery, turning on a shaded electric light. Honora bent over the crib.
+The child lay, as children will, with his little yellow head resting on
+his arm. But in a moment, as she stood gazing at him, he turned and
+opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she stooped and kissed him.
+
+"Where's Daddy?" he demanded.
+
+"We've waked him!" said Honora, remorsefully.
+
+"Daddy," said the child, "tell me a story."
+
+The nurse looked at Dallam reproachfully, as her duty demanded, and yet
+she smiled. The noise of laughter reached them from below.
+
+"I didn't have any to-night," the child pleaded.
+
+"I got home late," Dallam explained to Honora, and, looking at the nurse,
+pleaded in his turn; "just one."
+
+"Just a tiny one," said the child.
+
+"It's against all rules, Mr. Dallam," said the nurse, "but--he's been
+very lonesome to-day."
+
+Dallam sat down on one side of him, Honora on the other.
+
+"Will you go to sleep right away if I do, Sid?" he asked.
+
+The child shut his eyes very tight.
+
+"Like that," he promised.
+
+It was not the Sidney Dallam of the counting-room who told that story,
+and Honora listened with strange sensations which she did not attempt to
+define.
+
+"I used to be fond of that one when I was a youngster," he explained
+apologetically to her as they went out, and little Sid had settled
+himself obediently on the pillow once more. "It was when I dreamed," he
+added, "of less prosaic occupations than the stock market."
+
+Sidney Dallam had dreamed!
+
+Although Lily Dallam had declared that to leave her house before midnight
+was to insult her, it was half-past eleven when Honora and her husband
+reached home. He halted smilingly in her doorway as she took off her wrap
+and laid it over a chair.
+
+"Well, Honora," he asked, "how do you like--the whirl of fashion?"
+
+She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that
+sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.
+
+"What a dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said. "I wonder what
+would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of time!
+Own up that you like--a little variety in life."
+
+Being a man, he qualified his approval.
+
+"I didn't have a bad time," he admitted. "I had a talk with Brent after
+dinner, and I think I've got him interested in a little scheme. It's a
+strange thing that Sid Dallam was never able to do any business with him.
+If I can put this through, coming to Quicksands will have been worth
+while." He paused a moment, and added: "Brent seems to have taken quite a
+shine to you, Honora."
+
+She dropped her arms, and going over to her dressing table, unclasped a
+pin on the front of her gown.
+
+"I imagine," she answered, in an indifferent tone, "that he acts so with
+every new woman he meets."
+
+Howard remained for a while in the doorway, seemingly about to speak.
+Then he turned on his heel, and she heard him go into his own room.
+
+Far into the night she lay awake, the various incidents of the evening,
+like magic lantern views, thrown with bewildering rapidity on the screen
+of her mind. At last she was launched into life, and the days of her
+isolation gone by forever. She was in the centre of things. And yet
+--well, nothing could be perfect. Perhaps she demanded too much. Once or
+twice, in the intimate and somewhat uproarious badinage that had been
+tossed back and forth in the drawing-room after dinner, her delicacy had
+been offended: an air of revelry had prevailed, enhanced by the arrival
+of whiskey-and-soda on a tray. And at the time she had been caught up by
+an excitement in the grip of which she still found herself. She had been
+aware, as she tried to talk to Warren Trowbridge, of Trixton Brent's
+glance, and of a certain hostility from Mrs. Chandos that caused her now
+to grow warm with a kind of shame when she thought of it. But she could
+not deny that this man had for her a fascination. There was in him an
+insolent sense of power, of scarcely veiled contempt for the company in
+which he found himself. And she asked herself, in this mood of
+introspection, whether a little of his contempt for Lily Dallam's guests
+had not been communicated from him to her.
+
+When she had risen to leave, he had followed her into the entry. She
+recalled him vividly as he had stood before her then, a cigar in one hand
+and a lighted match in the other, his eyes fixed upon her with a
+singularly disquieting look that was tinged, however, with amusement.
+"I'm coming to see you," he announced.
+
+"Do be careful," she had cried, "you'll burn yourself!"
+
+"That," he answered, tossing away the match, "is to be expected."
+
+She laughed nervously.
+
+"Good night," he added, "and remember my bet."
+
+What could he have meant when he had declared that she would not remain
+in Quicksands?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GAD AND MENI
+
+There was an orthodox place of worship at Quicksands, a temple not merely
+opened up for an hour or so on Sunday mornings to be shut tight during
+the remainder of the week although it was thronged with devotees on the
+Sabbath. This temple, of course, was the Quicksands Club. Howard Spence
+was quite orthodox; and, like some of our Puritan forefathers, did not
+even come home to the midday meal on the first day of the week. But a
+certain instinct of protest and of nonconformity which may have been
+remarked in our heroine sent her to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea--by no means
+so well attended as the house of Gad and Meni. She walked home in a
+pleasantly contemplative state of mind through a field of daisies, and
+had just arrived at the hedge m front of the Brackens when the sound of
+hoofs behind her caused her to turn. Mr. Trixton Brent, very firmly
+astride of a restive, flea-bitten polo pony, surveyed her amusedly.
+
+"Where have you been?" said he.
+
+"To church," replied Honora, demurely.
+
+"Such virtue is unheard of in Quicksands."
+
+"It isn't virtue," said Honora.
+
+"I had my doubts about that, too," he declared.
+
+"What is it, then?" she asked laughingly, wondering why he had such a
+faculty of stirring her excitement and interest.
+
+"Dissatisfaction," was his prompt reply.
+
+"I don't see why you say that," she protested.
+
+"I'm prepared to make my wager definite," said he. "The odds are a
+thoroughbred horse against a personally knitted worsted waistcoat that
+you won't stay in Quicksands six months."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense," said Honora, "and besides, I can't
+knit."
+
+There was a short silence during which he didn't relax his disconcerting
+stare.
+
+"Won't you come in?" she asked. "I'm sorry Howard isn't home."
+
+"I'm not," he said promptly. "Can't you come over to my box for lunch?
+I've asked Lula Chandos and Warry Trowbridge."
+
+It was not without appropriateness that Trixton Brent called his house
+the "Box." It was square, with no pretensions to architecture whatever,
+with a porch running all the way around it. And it was literally filled
+with the relics of the man's physical prowess cups for games of all
+descriptions, heads and skins from the Bitter Roots to Bengal, and masks
+and brushes from England. To Honora there was an irresistible and
+mysterious fascination in all these trophies, each suggesting a finished
+--and some perhaps a cruel--performance of the man himself. The cups were
+polished until they beat back the light like mirrors, and the glossy bear
+and tiger skins gave no hint of dying agonies.
+
+Mr. Brent's method with women, Honora observed, more resembled the noble
+sport of Isaac Walton than that of Nimrod, but she could not deny that
+this element of cruelty was one of his fascinations. It was very evident
+to a feminine observer, for instance, that Mrs. Chandos was engaged in a
+breathless and altogether desperate struggle with the slow but inevitable
+and appalling Nemesis of a body and character that would not harmonize.
+If her figure grew stout, what was to become of her charm as an 'enfant
+gate'? Her host not only perceived, but apparently derived great
+enjoyment out of the drama of this contest. From self-indulgence to
+self-denial--even though inspired by terror--is a far cry. And Trixton
+Brent had evidently prepared his menu with a satanic purpose.
+
+"What! No entree, Lula? I had that sauce especially for you."
+
+"Oh, Trixy, did you really? How sweet of you!" And her liquid eyes
+regarded, with an almost equal affection, first the master and then the
+dish. "I'll take a little," she said weakly; "it's so bad for my gout."
+
+"What," asked Trixton Brent, flashing an amused glance at Honora, "are
+the symptoms of gout, Lula? I hear a great deal about that trouble these
+days, but it seems to affect every one differently."
+
+Mrs. Chandos grew very red, but Warry Trowbridge saved her.
+
+"It's a swelling," he said innocently.
+
+Brent threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"You haven't got it anyway, Warry," he cried.
+
+Mr. Trowbridge, who resembled a lean and greying Irish terrier,
+maintained that he had.
+
+"It's a pity you don't ride, Lula. I understand that that's one of the
+best preventives--for gout. I bought a horse last week that would just
+suit you--an ideal woman's horse. He's taken a couple of blue ribbons
+this summer."
+
+"I hope you will show him to us, Mr. Brent," exclaimed Honora, in a
+spirit of kindness.
+
+"Do you ride?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm devoted to it," she declared.
+
+It was true. For many weeks that spring, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
+mornings, she had gone up from Rivington to Harvey's Riding Academy, near
+Central Park. Thus she had acquired the elements of the equestrian art,
+and incidentally aroused the enthusiasm of a riding-master.
+
+After Mrs. Chandos had smoked three of the cigarettes which her host
+specially imported from Egypt, she declared, with no superabundance of
+enthusiasm, that she was ready to go and see what Trixy had in the
+"stables." In spite of that lady's somewhat obvious impatience, Honora
+insisted upon admiring everything from the monogram of coloured sands so
+deftly woven on the white in the coach house, to the hunters and polo
+ponies in their rows of boxes. At last Vercingetorix, the latest
+acquisition of which Brent had spoken, was uncovered and trotted around
+the ring.
+
+"I'm sorry, Trixy, but I've really got to leave," said Mrs. Chandos. "And
+I'm in such a predicament! I promised Fanny Darlington I'd go over there,
+and it's eight miles, and both my horses are lame."
+
+Brent turned to his coachman.
+
+"Put a pair in the victoria right away and drive Mrs. Chandos to Mrs.
+Darlington's," he said.
+
+She looked at him, and her lip quivered.
+
+"You always were the soul of generosity, Trixy, but why the victoria?"
+
+"My dear Lula," he replied, "if there's any other carriage you prefer--?"
+
+Honora did not hear the answer, which at any rate was scarcely audible.
+She moved away, and her eyes continued to follow Vercingetorix as he
+trotted about the tan-bark after a groom. And presently she was aware
+that Trixton Brent was standing beside her.
+
+"What do you think of him?" he asked.
+
+"He's adorable," declared Honora. Would you like to try him?"
+
+"Oh--might I? Sometime?"
+
+"Why not to-day--now?" he said. "I'll send him over to your house and
+have your saddle put on him."
+
+Before Honora could protest Mrs. Chandos came forward.
+
+"It's awfully sweet of you, Trixy, to offer to send me to Fanny's, but
+Warry says he will drive me over. Good-by, my dear," she added, holding
+out her hand to Honora.
+
+"I hope you enjoy your ride."
+
+Mr. Trowbridge's phaeton was brought up, Brent helped Mrs. Chandos in,
+and stood for a moment gazing after her. Amusement was still in his eyes
+as he turned to Honora.
+
+"Poor Lula!" he said. "Most women could have done it better than that
+--couldn't they?"
+
+"I think you were horrid to her," exclaimed Honora, indignantly. "It
+wouldn't have hurt you to drive her to Mrs. Darlington's."
+
+It did not occur to her that her rebuke implied a familiarity at which
+they had swiftly but imperceptibly arrived.
+
+"Oh, yes, it would hurt me," said he. "I'd rather spend a day in jail
+than drive with Lula in that frame of mind. Tender reproaches, and all
+that sort of thing, you know although I can't believe you ever indulge in
+them. Don't," he added.
+
+In spite of the fact that she was up in arms for her sex, Honora smiled.
+
+"Do you know," she said slowly, "I'm beginning to think you are a brute."
+
+"That's encouraging," he replied.
+
+"And fickle."
+
+"Still more encouraging. Most men are fickle. We're predatory animals."
+
+"It's just as well that I am warned," said Honora. She raised her parasol
+and picked up her skirts and shot him a look. Although he did not
+resemble in feature the great if unscrupulous Emperor of the French, he
+reminded her now of a picture she had once seen of Napoleon and a lady;
+the lady obviously in a little flutter under the Emperor's scrutiny. The
+picture had suggested a probable future for the lady.
+
+"How long will it take you to dress?" he asked.
+
+"To dress for what?"
+
+"To ride with me."
+
+"I'm not going to ride with you," she said, and experienced a tingle of
+satisfaction from his surprise.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.
+
+"In the first place, because I don't want to; and in the second, because
+I'm expecting Lily Dallam."
+
+"Lily never keeps an engagement," he said.
+
+"That's no reason why I shouldn't," Honora answered.
+
+"I'm beginning to think you're deuced clever," said he.
+
+"How unfortunate for me!" she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed, although it was plain that he was obviously put out. Honora
+was still smiling.
+
+"Deuced clever," he repeated.
+
+"An experienced moth," suggested Honora; "perhaps one that has been
+singed a little, once or twice. Good-by--I've enjoyed myself immensely."
+
+She glanced back at him as she walked down the path to the roadway. He
+was still standing where she had left him, his feet slightly apart, his
+hands in the pockets of his riding breeches, looking after her.
+
+Her announcement of an engagement with Mrs. Dallam had been, to put it
+politely, fiction. She spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters
+home, pausing at periods to look out of the window. Occasionally it
+appeared that her reflections were amusing. At seven o'clock Howard
+arrived, flushed and tired after his day of rest.
+
+"By the way, Honora, I saw Trixy Brent at the Club, and he said you
+wouldn't go riding with him."
+
+"Do you call him Trixy to his face?" she asked.
+
+"What? No--but everyone calls him Trixy. What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied. "Only--the habit every one has in Quicksands of
+speaking of people they don't know well by their nicknames seems rather
+bad taste."
+
+"I thought you liked Quicksands," he retorted. "You weren't happy until
+you got down here."
+
+"It's infinitely better than Rivington," she said.
+
+"I suppose," he remarked, with a little irritation unusual in him, "that
+you'll be wanting to go to Newport next."
+
+"Perhaps," said Honora, and resumed her letter. He fidgeted about the
+room for a while, ordered a cocktail, and lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Look here," he began presently, "I wish you'd be decent to Brent. He's a
+pretty good fellow, and he's in with James Wing and that crowd of big
+financiers, and he seems to have taken a shine to me probably because
+he's heard of that copper deal I put through this spring."
+
+Honora thrust back her writing pad, turned in her chair, and faced him.
+
+"How 'decent' do you wish me to be?" she inquired.
+
+"How decent?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He regarded her uneasily, took the cocktail which the maid offered him,
+drank it, and laid down the glass.
+
+He had had before, in the presence of his wife, this vague feeling of
+having passed boundaries invisible to him. In her eyes was a curious
+smile that lacked mirth, in her voice a dispassionate note that added to
+his bewilderment.
+
+"What do you mean, Honora?"
+
+"I know it's too much to expect of a man to be as solicitous about his
+wife as he is about his business," she replied. "Otherwise he would
+hesitate before he threw her into the arms of Mr. Trixton Brent. I warn
+you that he is very attractive to women."
+
+"Hang it," said Howard, "I can't see what you're driving at. I'm not
+throwing you into his arms. I'm merely asking you to be friendly with
+him. It means a good deal to me--to both of us. And besides, you can take
+care of yourself. You're not the sort of woman to play the fool."
+
+"One never can tell," said Honora, "what may happen. Suppose I fell in
+love with him?"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," he said.
+
+"I'm not so sure," she answered, meditatively, "that it is nonsense. It
+would be quite easy to fall in love with him. Easier than you imagine.
+curiously. Would you care?" she added.
+
+"Care!" he cried; "of course I'd care. What kind of rot are you talking?"
+
+"Why would you care?"
+
+"Why? What a darned idiotic question--"
+
+"It's not really so idiotic as you think it is," she said. "Suppose I
+allowed Mr. Brent to make love to me, as he's very willing to do, would
+you be sufficiently interested to compete."
+
+"To what?"
+
+"To compete."
+
+"But--but we're married."
+
+She laid her hand upon her knee and glanced down at it.
+
+"It never occurred to me until lately," she said, "how absurd is the
+belief men still hold in these days that a wedding-ring absolves them
+forever from any effort on their part to retain their wives' affections.
+They regard the ring very much as a ball and chain, or a hobble to
+prevent the women from running away, that they may catch them whenever
+they may desire--which isn't often. Am I not right?"
+
+He snapped his cigarette case.
+
+"Darn it, Honora, you're getting too deep for me!" he exclaimed. "You
+never liked those, Browning women down at Rivington, but if this isn't
+browning I'm hanged if I know what it is. An attack of nerves, perhaps.
+They tell me that women go all to pieces nowadays over nothing at all."
+
+"That's just it," she agreed, "nothing at all!"
+
+"I thought as much," he replied, eager to seize this opportunity of
+ending a conversation that had neither head nor tail, and yet was
+marvellously uncomfortable. "There! be a good girl, and forget it."
+
+He stooped down suddenly to her face to kiss her, but she turned her face
+in time to receive the caress on the cheek.
+
+"The panacea!" she said.
+
+He laughed a little, boyishly, as he stood looking down at her.
+
+"Sometimes I can't make you out," he said. "You've changed a good deal
+since I married you."
+
+She was silent. But the thought occurred to her that a complete
+absorption in commercialism was not developing.
+
+"If you can manage it, Honora," he added with an attempt at lightness, "I
+wish you'd have a little dinner soon, and ask Brent. Will you?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied, "would give me greater pleasure."
+
+He patted her on the shoulder and left the room whistling. But she sat
+where she was until the maid came in to pull the curtains and turn on the
+lights, reminding her that guests were expected.
+
+          .....................
+
+Although the circle of Mr. Brent's friends could not be said to include
+any university or college presidents, it was, however, both catholic and
+wide. He was hail fellow, indeed, with jockeys and financiers, great
+ladies and municipal statesmen of good Irish stock. He was a lion who
+roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of which it
+would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred Quicksands: a
+man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular, nevertheless. Many
+ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him: some of them he had
+cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest of inspections,
+disdainfully thrust aside with his paw.
+
+This instinct for lion taming, which the most spirited of women possess,
+is, by the way, almost inexplicable to the great majority of the male
+sex. Honora had it, as must have been guessed. But however our faith in
+her may be justified by the ridiculous ease of her previous conquests, we
+cannot regard without trepidation her entrance into the arena with this
+particular and widely renowned king of beasts. Innocence pitted against
+sophistry and wile and might.
+
+Two of the preliminary contests we have already witnessed. Others, more
+or less similar, followed during a period of two months or more. Nothing
+inducing the excessive wagging of tongues,--Honora saw to that, although
+Mrs. Chandos kindly took the trouble to warn our heroine,--a scene for
+which there is unfortunately no space in this chronicle; an entirely
+amicable, almost honeyed scene, in Honora's boudoir. Nor can a complete
+picture of life at Quicksands be undertaken. Multiply Mrs. Dallam's
+dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club by
+twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it. It was not precisely
+intellectual. "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are
+blank in history's book." Let us leave it at that.
+
+Late one afternoon in August Honora was riding homeward along the ocean
+road. The fragrant marshes that bordered it were a vivid green under the
+slanting rays of the sun, and she was gazing across them at the breakers
+crashing on the beach beyond. Trixton Brent was beside her.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't stare at me so," she said, turning to him suddenly;
+"it is embarrassing."
+
+"How did you know I was looking at you?" he asked.
+
+"I felt it."
+
+He drew his horse a little nearer.
+
+"Sometimes you're positively uncanny," she added.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I rather like that castles-in-Spain expression you wore," he declared.
+
+"Castles in Spain?"
+
+"Or in some other place where the real estate is more valuable. Certainly
+not in Quicksands."
+
+"You are uncanny," proclaimed Honora, with conviction.
+
+"I told you you wouldn't like Quicksands," said he.
+
+"I've never said I didn't like it," she replied. "I can't see why you
+assume that I don't."
+
+"You're ambitious," he said. "Not that I think it a fault, when it's more
+or less warranted. Your thrown away here, and you know it."
+
+She made him a bow from the saddle.
+
+"I have not been without a reward, at least," she answered, and looked at
+him.
+
+"I have," said he.
+
+Honora smiled.
+
+"I'm going to be your good angel, and help you get out of it," he
+continued.
+
+"Get out of what?"
+
+"Quicksands."
+
+"Do you think I'm in danger of sinking?" she asked. "And is it impossible
+for me to get out alone, if I wished to?"
+
+"It will be easier with my help," he answered. "You're clever enough to
+realize that--Honora."
+
+She was silent awhile.
+
+"You say the most extraordinary things," she remarked presently.
+"Sometimes I think they are almost--"
+
+"Indelicate," he supplied.
+
+She coloured.
+
+"Yes, indelicate."
+
+"You can't forgive me for sweeping away your rose-coloured cloud of
+romance," he declared, laughing. "There are spades in the pack, however
+much you may wish to ignore 'em. You know very well you don't like these
+Quicksands people. They grate on your finer sensibilities, and all that
+sort of thing. Come, now, isn't it so?"
+
+She coloured again, and put her horse to the trot.
+
+"Onwards and upwards," he cried. "Veni, vidi, vici, ascendi."
+
+"It seems to me," she laughed, "that so much education is thrown away on
+the stock market."
+
+"Whether you will be any happier higher up," he went on, "God knows.
+Sometimes I think you ought to go back to the Arcadia you came from. Did
+you pick out Spence for an embryo lord of high finance?"
+
+"My excuse is," replied Honora, "that I was very young, and I hadn't met
+you."
+
+Whether the lion has judged our heroine with astuteness, or done her a
+little less than justice, must be left to the reader. Apparently he is
+accepting her gentle lashings with a meek enjoyment. He assisted her to
+alight at her own door, sent the horses home, and offered to come in and
+give her a lesson in a delightful game that was to do its share in the
+disintegration of the old and tiresome order of things--bridge. The lion,
+it will be seen, was self-sacrificing even to the extent of double dummy.
+He had picked up the game with characteristic aptitude abroad
+--Quicksands had yet to learn it.
+
+Howard Spence entered in the midst of the lesson.
+
+"Hello, Brent," said he, genially, "you may be interested to know I got
+that little matter through without a hitch to-day."
+
+"I continue to marvel at you," said the lion, and made it no trumps.
+
+Since this is a veracious history, and since we have wandered so far from
+home and amidst such strange, if brilliant scenes, it must be confessed
+that Honora, three days earlier, had entered a certain shop in New York
+and inquired for a book on bridge. Yes, said the clerk, he had such a
+treatise, it had arrived from England a week before. She kept it looked
+up in her drawer, and studied it in the mornings with a pack of cards
+before her.
+
+Given the proper amount of spur, anything in reason can be mastered.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3, by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook A Modern Chronicle, v3, by Winston Churchill
+WC#39 in our series by Winston Churchill (An American cousin of Sir Winston)
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+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (An American Cousin of Sir Winston)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5376]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 28, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V3, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+Volume 3.
+I.        SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE
+II.       "STAFFORD PARK"
+III.      THE GREAT UNATTACHED
+IV.       THE NEW DOCTRINE
+V.        QUICKSANDS
+VI.       GAD AND MENI
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!
+
+It was late November.  And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-
+room of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the
+moss-hung Southern forest into which she stared.  She was happy, as a
+child is happy who is taken on an excursion into the unknown.  The
+monotony of existence was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing
+walls.  Limitless possibilities lay ahead.
+
+The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were
+moments of retrospection--as now.  She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm,
+walking up the aisle of the old church.  How many Sundays of her life had
+she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of
+its gothic arches!  She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale,
+Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who was to be
+her husband.  She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing reciting
+the words of that wonderful introduction.  At other weddings she had been
+moved.  Why was her own so unrealizable?
+
+     "Honora, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live
+     together after God's ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony?  Wilt
+     thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness
+     and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him,
+     so long as ye both shall live?"
+
+She had promised.  And they were walking out of the church, facing the
+great rose window with its blended colours, and the vaults above were
+ringing now with the volume of an immortal march.
+
+After that an illogical series of events and pictures passed before her.
+She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at her
+husband, who had kissed her passionately.  He was there beside her,
+looking extremely well in his top hat and frock-coat, with a white flower
+in his buttonhole.  He was the representative of the future she had
+deliberately chosen.  And yet, by virtue of the strange ceremony through
+which they had passed, he seemed to have changed.  In her attempt to
+seize upon a reality she looked out of the window.  They were just
+passing the Hanbury mansion in Wayland Square, and her eyes fell upon
+the playroom windows under the wide cornice; and she wondered whether the
+doll's house were still in its place, its mute inhabitants waiting to be
+called by the names she had given them, and quickened into life once
+more.
+
+Next she recalled the arrival at the little house that had been her home,
+summer and winter, for so many years of her life.  A red and white
+awning, stretching up the length of the walk which once had run beside
+the tall pear trees, gave it an unrecognizable, gala air.  Long had it
+stood there, patient, unpretentious, content that the great things should
+pass it by!  And now, modest still, it had been singled out from amongst
+its neighbours and honoured.  Was it honoured?  It seemed to Honora, so
+fanciful this day, that its unwonted air of festival was unnatural.  Why
+should the hour of departure from such a harbour of peace be celebrated?
+
+She was standing beside her husband in the little parlour, while carriage
+doors slammed in the dusk outside; while one by one--a pageant of the
+past which she was leaving forever the friends of her childhood came and
+went.  Laughter and tears and kisses!  And then, in no time at all, she
+found herself changing for the journey in the "little house under the
+hill."  There, locked up in the little desk Cousin Eleanor had given her
+long ago, was the unfinished manuscript of that novel written at fever
+heat during those summer days in which she had sought to escape from a
+humdrum existence.  And now--she had escaped.  Aunt Mary, helpful under
+the most trying circumstances, was putting her articles in a bag, the
+initials on which she did not recognize--H. L. S.--Honora Leffingwell
+Spence; while old Catherine, tearful and inefficient, knelt before her,
+fumbling at her shoes.  Honora, bending over, took the face of the
+faithful old servant and kissed it.
+
+"Don't feel badly, Catherine," she said; "I'll be coming back often to
+see you, and you will be coming to see me."
+
+"Will ye, darlint?  The blessing of God be on you for those words--and
+you to be such a fine lady!  It always was a fine lady ye were, with such
+a family and such a bringin' up.  And now ye've married a rich man, as is
+right and proper.  If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none too good
+for you."
+
+"Catherine," said Aunt Mary, reprovingly, "what ideas you put into the
+child's head!"
+
+"Sure, Miss Mary," cried Catherine, "it's always the great lady she was,
+and she a wee bit of a thing.  And wasn't it yerself, Miss Mary, that
+dressed her like a princess?"
+
+Then came the good-bys--the real ones.  Uncle Tom, always the friend of
+young people, was surrounded by a group of bridesmaids in the hall.  She
+clung to him.  And Peter, who had the carriage ready.  What would her
+wedding have been without Peter?  As they drove towards the station, his
+was the image that remained persistently in her mind, bareheaded on the
+sidewalk in the light of the carriage lamps.  The image of struggle.
+
+She had married Prosperity.  A whimsical question, that shocked her,
+irresistibly presented itself: was it not Prosperity that she had
+promised to love, honour, and obey?
+
+It must not be thought that Honora was by any means discontented with her
+Prosperity.  He was new--that was all.  Howard looked new.  But she
+remembered that he had always looked new; such was one of his greatest
+charms.  In the long summer days since she had bade him good-by on her
+way through New York from Silverdale, Honora had constructed him: he was
+perpetual yet sophisticated Youth; he was Finance and Fashion; he was
+Power in correctly cut clothes.  And when he had arrived in St. Louis to
+play his part in the wedding festivities, she had found her swan a swan
+indeed--he was all that she had dreamed of him.  And she had tingled with
+pride as she introduced him to her friends, or gazed at him across the
+flower-laden table as he sat beside Edith Hanbury at the bridesmaids'
+dinner in Wayland Square.
+
+The wedding ceremony had somehow upset her opinion of him, but Honora
+regarded this change as temporary.  Julius Caesar or George Washington
+himself must have been somewhat ridiculous as bridegrooms: and she had
+the sense to perceive that her own agitations as a bride were partly
+responsible.  No matter how much a young girl may have trifled with that
+electric force in the male sex known as the grand passion, she shrinks
+from surrendering herself to its dominion.  Honora shrank.  He made love
+to her on the way to the station, and she was terrified.  He actually
+forgot to smoke cigarettes.  What he said was to the effect that he
+possessed at last the most wonderful and beautiful woman in the world,
+and she resented the implication of possession.
+
+Nevertheless, in the glaring lights of the station, her courage and her
+pride in him revived, and he became again a normal and a marked man.
+Although the sex may resent it, few women are really indifferent to
+clothes, and Howard's well-fitting check suit had the magic touch of the
+metropolis.  His manner matched his garments.  Obsequious porters grasped
+his pig-skin bag, and seized Honora's; the man at the gate inclined his
+head as he examined their tickets, and the Pullman conductor himself
+showed them their stateroom, and plainly regarded them as important
+people far from home.  Howard had the cosmopolitan air.  He gave the man
+a dollar, and remarked that the New Orleans train was not exactly the
+Chicago and New York Limited.
+
+"Not by a long shot," agreed the conductor, as he went out, softly
+closing the door behind him.
+
+Whereupon the cosmopolitan air dropped from Mr. Howard Spence, not
+gracefully, and he became once more that superfluous and awkward and
+utterly banal individual, the husband.
+
+"Let's go out and walk on the platform until the train starts," suggested
+Honora, desperately.  "Oh, Howard, the shades are up!  I'm sure I saw
+some one looking in!"
+
+He laughed.  But there was a light in his eyes that frightened her, and
+she deemed his laughter out of place.  Was he, after all, an utterly
+different man than what she had thought him?  Still laughing, he held to
+her wrist with one hand, and with the other pulled down the shades.
+
+"This is good enough for me," he said.  "At last--at last," he whispered,
+"all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself!  Do you love me
+just a little, Honora?"
+
+"Of course I do," she faltered, still struggling, her face burning as
+from a fire.
+
+"Then what's the matter?"  he demanded.
+
+"I don't know--I want air.  Howard, please let me go.  It's-it's so hot
+inhere.  You must let me go."
+
+Her release, she felt afterwards, was due less to a physical than a
+mental effort.  She seemed suddenly to have cowed him, and his resistance
+became enfeebled.  She broke from him, and opened the door, and reached
+the cement platform and the cold air.  When he joined her, there was
+something jokingly apologetic about his manner, and he was smoking a
+cigarette; and she could not help thinking that she would have respected
+him more if he had held her.
+
+"Women beat me," he said.  "They're the most erratic stock in the
+market."
+
+It is worthy of remark how soon the human, and especially the feminine
+brain adjusts itself to new conditions.  In a day or two life became real
+again, or rather romantic.
+
+For the American husband in his proper place is an auxiliary who makes
+all things possible.  His ability to "get things done," before it ceases
+to be a novelty, is a quality to be admired.  Honora admired.  An
+intimacy--if the word be not too strong--sprang up between them.  They
+wandered through the quaint streets of New Orleans, that most foreign of
+American cities, searching out the tumbledown French houses; and Honora
+was never tired of imagining the romances and tragedies which must have
+taken place in them.  The new scenes excited her,--the quaint cafes with
+their delicious, peppery Creole cooking,--and she would sit talking for a
+quarter of an hour at a time with Alphonse, who outdid himself to please
+the palate of a lady with such allure.  He called her "Madame"; but well
+he knew, this student of human kind, that the title had not been of long
+duration.
+
+Madame came from New York, without doubt?  such was one of his questions,
+as he stood before them in answer to Howard's summons, rubbing his hands.
+And Honora, with a little thrill, acknowledged the accuracy of his guess.
+There was no dish of Alphonse's they did not taste.  And Howard smilingly
+paid the bills.  He was ecstatically proud of his wife, and although he
+did justice to the cooking, he cared but little for the mysterious
+courtyards, the Spanish buildings, and the novels of Mr. George W.
+Cable, which Honora devoured when she was too tired to walk about.  He
+followed her obediently to the battle field of New Orleans, and admired
+as obediently the sunset, when the sky was all silver-green through the
+magnolias, and the spreading live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and a
+silver bar lay upon the Father of Waters.  Honora, with beating heart and
+flushed cheeks, felt these things: Howard felt them through her and
+watched--not the sunset--but the flame it lighted in her eyes.
+
+He left her but twice a day, and then only for brief periods.  He even
+felt a joy when she ventured to complain.
+
+"I believe you care more for those horrid stocks than for me," she said.
+"I--I am just a novelty."
+
+His answer, since they were alone in their sitting-room, was obvious.
+
+"Howard," she cried, "how mean of you!  Now I'll have to do my hair all
+over again.  I've got such a lot of it--you've no idea how difficult it
+is."
+
+"You bet I have!" he declared meaningly, and Honora blushed.
+
+His pleasure of possession was increased when people turned to look at
+her on the street or in the dining room--to think that this remarkable
+creature was in reality his wife!  Nor did the feeling grow less intense
+with time, being quite the same when they arrived at a fashionable resort
+in the Virginia mountains, on their way to New York.  For such were the
+exactions of his calling that he could spare but two weeks for his
+honeymoon.
+
+Honora's interest in her new surroundings was as great, and the sight of
+those towering ridges against the soft blue of the autumn skies inspired
+her.  It was Indian summer here, the tang of wood smoke was in the air;
+in the valleys--as they drove--the haze was shot with the dust of gold,
+and through the gaps they looked across vast, unexplored valleys to other
+distant, blue-stained ridges that rose between them and the sunset.
+Honora took an infinite delight in the ramshackle cabins beside the
+red-clay roads, in the historic atmosphere of the ancient houses and
+porticoes of the Warm Springs, where the fathers of the Republic had
+come to take the waters.  And one day, when a north wind had scattered
+the smoke and swept the sky, Howard followed her up the paths to the
+ridge's crest, where she stood like a Victory, her garments blowing,
+gazing off over the mighty billows to the westward.  Howard had never
+seen a Victory, but his vision of domesticity was untroubled.
+
+Although it was late in the season, the old-fashioned, rambling hotel was
+well filled, and people interested Honora as well as scenery--a proof of
+her human qualities.  She chided Howard because he, too, was not more
+socially inclined.
+
+"How can you expect me to be--now?" he demanded.
+
+She told him he was a goose, although secretly admitting the justice of
+his defence.  He knew four or five men in the hotel, with whom he talked
+stocks while waiting for Honora to complete her toilets; and he gathered
+from two of these, who were married, that patience was a necessary
+qualification in a husband.  One evening they introduced their wives.
+Later, Howard revealed their identity--or rather that of the husbands.
+
+"Bowker is one of the big men in the Faith Insurance Company, and Tyler
+is president of the Gotham Trust."  He paused to light a cigarette, and
+smiled at her significantly.  "If you can dolly the ladies along once in
+a while, Honora, it won't do any harm," he added.  "You have a way with
+you, you know,--when you want to."
+
+Honora grew scarlet.
+
+"Howard!" she exclaimed.
+
+He looked somewhat shamefaced.
+
+"Well," he said, "I was only joking.  Don't take it seriously.  But it
+doesn't do any harm to be polite."  
+
+"I am always polite," she answered a little coldly.
+
+Honeymoons, after all, are matters of conjecture, and what proportion of
+them contain disenchantments will never be known.  Honora lay awake for a
+long time that night, and the poignant and ever recurring remembrance of
+her husband's remark sent the blood to her face like a flame.  Would
+Peter, or George Hanbury, or any of the intimate friends of her childhood
+have said such a thing?
+
+A new and wistful feeling of loneliness was upon her.  For some days,
+with a certain sense of isolation and a tinge of envy which she would not
+acknowledge, she had been watching a group of well-dressed, clean-looking
+people galloping off on horseback or filling the six-seated buckboards.
+They were from New York--that she had discovered; and they did not mix
+with the others in the hotel.  She had thought it strange that Howard did
+not know them, but for a reason which she did not analyze she hesitated
+to ask him who they were.  They had rather a rude manner of staring--
+especially the men--and the air of deriving infinite amusement from that
+which went on about them.  One of them, a young man with a lisp who was
+addressed by the singular name of "Toots," she had overheard demanding as
+she passed: who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark hair and the
+colour?  Wherever she went, she was aware of them.  It was foolish, she
+knew, but their presence seemed--in the magnitude which trifles are wont
+to assume in the night-watches--of late to have poisoned her pleasure.
+
+Enlightenment as to the identity of these disturbing persons came, the
+next day, from an unexpected source.  Indeed, from Mrs. Tyler.  She loved
+brides, she said, and Honora seemed to her such a sweet bride.  It was
+Mrs. Tyler's ambition to become thin (which was hitching her wagon to a
+star with a vengeance), and she invited our heroine to share her
+constitutional on the porch.  Honora found the proceeding in the nature
+of an ordeal, for Mrs. Tyler's legs were short, her frizzled hair very
+blond, and the fact that it was natural made it seem, somehow, all the
+more damning.
+
+They had scarcely begun to walk before Honora, with a sense of dismay
+of which she was ashamed, beheld some of the people who had occupied her
+thoughts come out of the door and form a laughing group at the end of the
+porch.  She could not rid herself of the feeling that they were laughing
+at her.  She tried in vain to drive them from her mind, to listen to Mrs.
+Tyler's account of how she, too, came as a bride to New York from some
+place with a classical name, and to the advice that accompanied the
+narration.  The most conspicuous young woman in the group, in riding
+clothes, was seated on the railing, with the toe of one boot on the
+ground.  Her profile was clear-cut and her chestnut hair tightly knotted
+behind under her hat.  Every time they turned, this young woman stared at
+Honora amusedly.
+
+"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Tyler, suddenly and unexpectedly in the
+midst of a description of the delights of life in the metropolis.
+
+"Who?" asked Honora.
+
+"That young Mrs. Freddy Maitland, sitting on the rail.  She's the rudest
+woman in New York."
+
+A perversity of spirit which she could not control prompted Honora to
+reply:
+
+"Why, I think she is so good-looking, Mrs. Tyler.  And she seems to have
+so much individuality and independence."
+
+"There!"  cried Mrs. Tyler, triumphantly.  "Once--not so very long ago--I
+was just as inexperienced as you, my dear.  She belongs to that horribly
+fast set with which no self-respecting woman would be seen.  It's an
+outrage that they should come to a hotel like this and act as though it
+belonged to them.  She knows me quite as well as I know her, but when I
+am face to face she acts as though I was air."
+
+Honora could not help thinking that this, at least, required some
+imagination on Mrs. Maitland's part.  Mrs. Tyler had stopped for breath.
+
+"I have been introduced to her twice," she continued, "but of course I
+wouldn't speak to her.  The little man with the lisp, next to her, who is
+always acting in that silly way, they call Toots Cuthbert.  He gets his
+name in the newspapers by leading cotillons in New York and Newport.  And
+the tall, slim, blond one, with the green hat and the feather in it, is
+Jimmy Wing.  He's the son of James Wing, the financier."
+
+"I went to school at Sutcliffe with his sister," said Honora.
+
+It seemed to Honora that Mrs. Tyler's manner underwent a change.
+
+"My dear," she exclaimed, "did you go to Sutcliffe?  What a wonderful
+school it is!  I fully intend to send my daughter Louise there."
+
+An almost irresistible desire came over Honora to run away.  She excused
+herself instead, and hurried back towards her room.  On the way she met
+Howard in the corridor, and he held a telegram in his hand.
+
+"I've got some bad news, Honora," he said.  "That is, bad from the point
+of view of our honeymoon.  Sid Dallam is swamped with business, and wants
+me in New York.  I'm afraid we've got to cut it short."
+
+To his astonishment she smiled.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad, Howard," she cried.  "I--I don't like this place nearly
+so well as New Orleans.  There are--so many people here."
+
+He looked relieved, and patted her on the arm.
+
+"We'll go to-night, old girl," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"STAFFORD PARK"
+
+There is a terrifying aspect of all great cities.  Rome, with its
+leviathan aqueducts, its seething tenements clinging to the hills, its
+cruel, shining Palatine, must have overborne the provincial traveller
+coming up from Ostia.  And Honora, as she stood on the deck of the ferry-
+boat, approaching New York for the second time in her life, could not
+overcome a sense of oppression.  It was on a sharp December morning,
+and the steam of the hurrying craft was dazzling white in the early sun.
+Above and beyond the city rose, overpowering, a very different city,
+somehow, than that her imagination had first drawn.  Each of that
+multitude of vast towers seemed a fortress now, manned by Celt and Hun
+and, Israelite and Saxon, captained by Titans.  And the strife between
+them was on a scale never known in the world before, a strife with modern
+arms and modern methods and modern brains, in which there was no mercy.
+
+Hidden somewhere amidst those bristling miles of masonry to the northward
+of the towers was her future home.  Her mind dwelt upon it now, for the
+first time, and tried to construct it.  Once she had spoken to Howard of
+it, but he had smiled and avoided discussion.  What would it be like to
+have a house of one's own in New York?  A house on Fifth Avenue, as her
+girl friends had said when they laughingly congratulated her and begged
+her to remember that they came occasionally to New York.  Those of us
+who, like Honora, believe in Providence, do not trouble ourselves with
+mere matters of dollars and cents.  This morning, however, the huge
+material towers which she gazed upon seemed stronger than Providence, and
+she thought of her husband.  Was his fibre sufficiently tough to become
+eventually the captain of one of those fortresses, to compete with the
+Maitlands and the Wings, and others she knew by name, calmly and
+efficiently intrenched there?
+
+The boat was approaching the slip, and he came out to her from the cabin,
+where he had been industriously reading the stock reports, his newspapers
+thrust into his overcoat pocket.
+
+"There's no place like New York, after all," he declared, and added,
+"when the market's up.  We'll go to a hotel for breakfast."
+
+For some reason she found it difficult to ask the question on her lips.
+
+"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, "I suppose we couldn't go--home,
+Howard.  You--you have never told me where we are to live."
+
+As before, the reference to their home seemed to cause him amusement.  He
+became very mysterious.
+
+"Couldn't you pass away a few hours shopping this morning, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Honora.
+
+"While I gather in a few dollars," he continued.  "I'll meet you at
+lunch, and then we'll go-home."
+
+As the sun mounted higher, her spirits rose with it.  New York, or that
+strip of it which is known to the more fortunate of human beings, is a
+place to raise one's spirits on a sparkling day in early winter.  And
+Honora, as she drove in a hansom from shop to shop, felt a new sense of
+elation and independence.  She was at one, now, with the prosperity that
+surrounded her: her purse no longer limited, her whims existing only to
+be gratified.  Her reflections on this recently attained state alternated
+with alluring conjectures on the place of abode of which Howard had made
+such a mystery.  Where was it?  And why had he insisted, before showing
+it to her, upon waiting until afternoon?
+
+Newly arrayed in the most becoming of grey furs, she met him at that
+hitherto fabled restaurant which in future days--she reflected--was to
+become so familiar--Delmonico's.  Howard was awaiting her in the
+vestibule; and it was not without a little quiver of timidity and
+excitement and a consequent rise of colour that she followed the waiter
+to a table by the window.  She felt as though the assembled fashionable
+world was staring at her, but presently gathered courage enough to gaze
+at the costumes of the women and the faces of the men.  Howard, with a
+sang froid of which she felt a little proud, ordered a meal for which he
+eventually paid a fraction over eight dollars.  What would Aunt Mary have
+said to such extravagance?  He produced a large bunch of violets.
+
+"With Sid Dallam's love," he said, as she pinned them on her gown.
+"I tried to get Lily--Mrs. Sid--for lunch, but you never can put your
+finger on her.  She'll amuse you, Honora."
+
+"Oh, Howard, it's so much pleasanter lunching alone to-day.  I'm glad you
+didn't.  And then afterwards--?"
+
+He refused, however, to be drawn.  When they emerged she did not hear the
+directions he gave the cabman, and it was not until they turned into a
+narrow side street, which became dingier and dingier as they bumped their
+way eastward, that she experienced a sudden sinking sensation.
+
+"Howard!"  she cried.  "Where are you going?  You must tell me."
+
+"One of the prettiest suburbs in New Jersey--Rivington," he said.  "Wait
+till you see the house."
+
+"Suburbs!  Rivington!  New Jersey!" The words swam before Honora's eyes,
+like the great signs she had seen printed in black letters on the tall
+buildings from the ferry that morning.  She had a sickening sensation,
+and the odour of his cigarette in the cab became unbearable.  By an
+ironic trick of her memory, she recalled that she had told the clerks in
+the shops where she had made her purchases that she would send them her
+address later.  How different that address from what she had imagined it!
+
+"It's in the country!" she exclaimed.
+
+To lunch at Delmonico's for eight dollars and live in Rivington
+
+Howard appeared disturbed.  More than that, he appeared astonished,
+solicitous.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Honora?"  he asked.  "I thought you'd like it.
+It's a brand new house, and I got Lily Dallam to furnish it.  She's a
+wonder on that sort of thing, and I told her to go ahead--within reason.
+I talked it over with your aunt and uncle, and they agreed with me you'd
+much rather live out there for a few years than in a flat."
+
+"In a flat!" repeated Honora, with a shudder.
+
+"Certainly," he said, flicking his ashes out of the window.  "Who do you
+think I am, at my age?  Frederick T. Maitland, or the owner of the
+Brougham Building?"
+
+"But--Howard," she protested, "why didn't you talk it over with me?"
+
+"Because I wanted to surprise you," he replied.  "I spent a month and a
+half looking for that house.  And you never seemed to care.  It didn't
+occur to me that you would care--for the first few years," he added,
+and there was in his voice a note of reproach that did not escape her.
+"You never seemed inclined to discuss business with me, Honora.  I didn't
+think you were interested.  Dallam and I are making money.  We expect
+some day to be on Easy Street--so to speak--or Fifth Avenue.  Some day,
+I hope, you can show some of these people the road.  But just now what
+capital we have has to go into the business."
+
+Strangely enough, in spite of the intensity of her disappointment, she
+felt nearer to her husband in that instant than at any time since their
+marriage.  Honora, who could not bear to hurt any one's feelings, seized
+his hand repentantly.  Tears started in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Howard, I must seem to you very ungrateful," she cried.  "It was
+such a--such a surprise.  I have never lived in the country, and I'm sure
+it will be delightful--and much more healthful than the city.  Won't you
+forgive me?"
+
+If he had known as much about the fluctuations of the feminine
+temperament as of those of stocks, the ease with which Honora executed
+this complete change of front might have disturbed him.  Howard, as will
+be seen, possessed that quality which is loosely called good nature.
+In marriage, he had been told (and was ready to believe), the wind blew
+where it listed; and he was a wise husband who did not spend his time in
+inquiry as to its sources.  He kissed her before he helped her out of the
+carriage.  Again they crossed the North River, and he led her through the
+wooden ferry house on the New Jersey side to where the Rivington train
+was standing beside a platform shed.
+
+There was no parlour car.  Men and women--mostly women--with bundles were
+already appropriating the seats and racks, and Honora found herself
+wondering how many of these individuals were her future neighbours.  That
+there might have been an hysterical element in the lively anticipation
+she exhibited during the journey did not occur to Howard Spence.
+
+After many stops,--in forty-two minutes, to be exact, the brakeman
+shouted out the name of the place which was to be her home, and of which
+she had been ignorant that morning.  They alighted at an old red railroad
+station, were seized upon by a hackman in a coonskin coat, and thrust
+into a carriage that threatened to fall to pieces on the frozen macadam
+road.  They passed through a village in which Honora had a glimpse of the
+drug store and grocery and the Grand Army Hall; then came detached houses
+of all ages in one and two-acre plots some above the road, for the
+country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone,
+and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on
+which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone
+in a very new gutter on the right.
+
+"Here we are!" cried Howard, as he fished in his trousers pockets for
+money to pay the hackman.
+
+Honora looked around her.  Stafford Park consisted of a wide centre-way
+of red gravel, not yet packed, with an island in its middle planted with
+shrubbery and young trees, the bare branches of which formed a black
+tracery against the orange-red of the western sky.  On both sides of this
+centre-way were concrete walks, with cross-walks from the curbs to the
+houses.  There were six of these--three on each side--standing on a
+raised terrace and about two hundred feet apart.  Beyond them, to the
+northward, Stafford Park was still a wilderness of second-growth
+hardwood, interspersed with a few cedars.
+
+Honora's house, the first on the right, was exactly like the other five.
+If we look at it through her eyes, we shall find this similarity its main
+drawback.  If we are a little older, however, and more sophisticated, we
+shall suspect the owner of Stafford Park and his architect of a design
+to make it appear imposing.  It was (indefinite and much-abused term)
+Colonial; painted white; and double, with dormer windows of diagonal
+wood-surrounded panes in the roof.  There was a large pillared porch on
+its least private side--namely, the front.  A white-capped maid stood in
+the open doorway and smiled at Honora as she entered.
+
+Honora walked through the rooms.  There was nothing intricate about the
+house; it was as simple as two times four, and really too large for her
+and Howard.  Her presents were installed, the pictures and photograph
+frames and chairs, even Mr. Isham's dining-room table and Cousin
+Eleanor's piano.  The sight of these, and of the engraving which Aunt
+Mary had sent on, and which all her childhood had hung over her bed in
+the little room at home, brought the tears once more to her eyes.  But
+she forced them back bravely.
+
+These reflections were interrupted by the appearance of the little maid
+announcing that tea was ready, and bringing her two letters.  One was
+from Susan Holt, and the other, written in a large, slanting, and angular
+handwriting, was signed Lily Dallam.  It was dated from New York.
+
+"My dear Honora," it ran, "I feel that I must call you so, for Sid and
+Howard, in addition to being partners, are such friends.  I hesitated so
+long about furnishing your house, my dear, but Howard insisted, and said
+he wished to surprise you.  I am sending you this line to welcome you,
+and to tell you that I have arranged with the furniture people to take
+any or all things back that you do not like, and exchange them.  After
+all, they will be out of date in a few years, and Howard and Sid will
+have made so much money by that time, I hope, that I shall be able to
+leave my apartment, which is dear, and you will be coming to town."
+
+Honora laid down the sheet, and began to tidy her hair before the glass
+of the highly polished bureau in her room.  A line in Susan's letter
+occurred to her: "Mother hopes to see you soon.  She asked me to tell you
+to buy good things which will last you all your life, and says that it
+pays."
+
+The tea-table was steaming in the parlour in front of the wood fire in
+the blue tiled fireplace.  The oak floor reflected its gleam, and that of
+the electric lights; the shades were drawn; a slight odour of steam heat
+pervaded the place.  Howard, smoking a cigarette, was reclining on a sofa
+that evidently was not made for such a purpose, reading the evening
+newspapers.
+
+"Well, Honora," he said, as she took her seat behind the tea-table, "you
+haven't told me how you like it.  Pretty cosey, eh?  And enough spare
+room to have people out over Sundays."
+
+"Oh, Howard, I do like it," she cried, in a desperate attempt--which
+momentarily came near succeeding to convince herself that she could have
+desired nothing more.  "It's so sweet and clean and new--and all our
+own."
+
+She succeeded, at any rate, in convincing Howard.  In certain matters, he
+was easily convinced.
+
+"I thought you'd be pleased when you saw it, my dear," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GREAT UNATTACHED
+
+It was the poet Cowper who sang of domestic happiness as the only bliss
+that has survived the Fall.  One of the burning and unsolved questions of
+to-day is,--will it survive the twentieth century?  Will it survive rapid
+transit and bridge and Woman's Rights, the modern novel and modern drama,
+automobiles, flying machines, and intelligence offices; hotel, apartment,
+and suburban life, or four homes, or none at all?  Is it a weed that will
+grow anywhere, in a crevice between two stones in the city?  Or is it a
+plant that requires tender care and the water of self-sacrifice?  Above
+all, is it desirable?
+
+Our heroine, as may have been suspected, has an adaptable temperament.
+Her natural position is upright, but like the reed, she can bend
+gracefully, and yields only to spring back again blithely.  Since this
+chronicle regards her, we must try to look at existence through her eyes,
+and those of some of her generation and her sex: we must give the four
+years of her life in Rivington the approximate value which she herself
+would have put upon it--which is a chapter.  We must regard Rivington as
+a kind of purgatory, not solely a place of departed spirits, but of those
+which have not yet arrived; as one of the many temporary abodes of the
+Great Unattached.
+
+No philosophical writer has as yet made the attempt to define the change
+--as profound as that of the tadpole to the frog--between the lover and
+the husband.  An author of ideals would not dare to proclaim that this
+change is inevitable: some husbands--and some wives are fortunate enough
+to escape it, but it is not unlikely to happen in our modern
+civilization.  Just when it occurred in Howard Spence it is difficult to
+say, but we have got to consider him henceforth as a husband; one who
+regards his home as a shipyard rather than the sanctuary of a goddess;
+as a launching place, the ways of which are carefully greased, that he
+may slide off to business every morning with as little friction as
+possible, and return at night to rest undisturbed in a comfortable berth,
+to ponder over the combat of the morrow.
+
+It would be inspiring to summon the vision of Honora, in rustling
+garments, poised as the figurehead of this craft, beckoning him on to
+battle and victory.  Alas! the launching happened at that grimmest and
+most unromantic of hours-ten minutes of eight in the morning.  There was
+a period, indeterminate, when she poured out his coffee with wifely zeal;
+a second period when she appeared at the foot of the stairs to kiss him
+as he was going out of the door; a third when, clad in an attractive
+dressing-gown, she waved him good-by from the window; and lastly,
+a fourth, which was only marked by an occasional protest on his part,
+when the coffee was weak.
+
+"I'd gladly come down, Howard, if it seemed to make the least difference
+to you," said Honora.  "But all you do is to sit with your newspaper
+propped up and read the stock reports, and growl when I ask you a polite
+question.  You've no idea how long it makes the days out here, to get up
+early."
+
+"It seems to me you put in a good many days in town," he retorted.
+
+"Surely you don't expect me to spend all my time in Rivington!" she cried
+reproachfully; "I'd die.  And then I am always having to get new cooks
+for you, because they can't make Hollandaise sauce like hotel chefs.
+Men have no idea how hard it is to keep house in the country,--I just
+wish you had to go to those horrid intelligence offices.  You wouldn't
+stay in Rivington ten days.  And all the good cooks drink."
+
+Howard, indeed, with the aid of the village policeman, had had to expel
+from his kitchen one imperious female who swore like a dock hand, and who
+wounded Honora to the quick by remarking, as she departed in durance,
+that she had always lived with ladies and gentlemen and people who were
+somebody.  The incident had tended further to detract from the romance of
+the country.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the
+horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun.  And there is generally an
+afterglow.  In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions
+of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life
+was touched with a certain novelty.  There was a new runabout and a horse
+which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her
+husband.  On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long
+excursions, into the country--until the golf season began, when the
+lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed.  But after a while certain male
+competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued.  Sunday, after
+his pile of newspapers had religiously been disposed of, became a field
+day.  Indeed, it is impossible, without a twinge of pity, to behold
+Howard taking root in Rivington, for we know that sooner or later he will
+be dug up and transplanted.  The soil was congenial.  He played poker on
+the train with the Rivington husbands, and otherwise got along with them
+famously.  And it was to him an enigma--when occasionally he allowed his
+thoughts to dwell upon such trivial matters--why Honora was not equally
+congenial with the wives.
+
+There were, no doubt, interesting people in Rivington about whom many
+stories could be written: people with loves and fears and anxieties and
+joys, with illnesses and recoveries, with babies, but few grandchildren.
+There were weddings at the little church, and burials; there were dances
+at the golf club; there were Christmas trees, where most of the presents
+--like Honora's--came from afar, from family centres formed in a social
+period gone by; there were promotions for the heads of families, and
+consequent rejoicings over increases of income; there were movings; there
+were--inevitable in the ever grinding action of that remorseless law, the
+survival of the fittest--commercial calamities, and the heartrending
+search for new employment.
+
+Rivington called upon Honora in vehicles of all descriptions, in
+proportion to the improvidence or prosperity of the owners.  And Honora
+returned the calls, and joined the Sewing Circle, and the Woman's
+Luncheon Club, which met for the purpose of literary discussion.  In the
+evenings there were little dinners of six or eight, where the men talked
+business and the women house rent and groceries and gossip and the
+cheapest places in New York City to buy articles of the latest fashion.
+Some of them had actually built or were building houses that cost as much
+as thirty thousand dollars, with the inexplicable intention of remaining
+in Rivington the rest of their lives!
+
+Honora was kind to these ladies.  As we know, she was kind to everybody.
+She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become
+her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in
+fashionable restaurants.  Their range of discussion included babies and
+Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee.  It would be
+interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers
+met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever
+to depart.  The time and manner of this departure were matters to be
+determined in the future.
+
+It would be interesting to know, likewise, just at what period the
+intention of moving away from Rivington became fixed in Honora's mind.
+Honora circumscribed, Honora limited, Honora admitting defeat, and this
+chronicle would be finished.  The gods exist somewhere, though many
+incarnations may, be necessary to achieve their companionship.  And no
+prison walls loom so high as to appall our heroine's soul.  To exchange
+one prison for another is in itself something of a feat, and an argument
+that the thing may be done again.  Neither do the wise ones beat
+themselves uselessly against brick or stone.  Howard--poor man!--is
+fatuous enough to regard a great problem as being settled once and for
+all by a marriage certificate and a benediction; and labours under the
+delusion that henceforth he may come and go as he pleases, eat his
+breakfast in silence, sleep after dinner, and spend his Sundays at the
+Rivington Golf Club.  It is as well to leave him, at present, in blissful
+ignorance of his future.
+
+Our sympathies, however, must be with Honora, who has paid the price for
+heaven, and who discovers that by marriage she has merely joined the
+ranks of the Great Unattached.  Hitherto it had been inconceivable to her
+that any one sufficiently prosperous could live in a city, or near it and
+dependent on it, without being socially a part of it.  Most momentous of
+disillusions!  With the exception of the Sidney Dallams and one or two
+young brokers who occasionally came out over Sunday, her husband had no
+friends in New York.  Rivington and the Holt family (incongruous mixture)
+formed the sum total of her acquaintance.
+
+On Monday mornings in particular, if perchance she went to town, the huge
+signs which she read across the swamps, of breakfast foods and other
+necessaries, seemed, for some reason, best to express her isolation.
+Well-dressed, laughing people descended from omnibuses at the prettier
+stations, people who seemed all-sufficient to themselves; people she was
+sure she should like if only she knew them.  Once the sight of her school
+friend, Ethel Wing, chatting with a tall young man, brought up a flood of
+recollections; again, in a millinery establishment, she came face to face
+with the attractive Mrs. Maitland whom she had seen at Hot Springs.
+Sometimes she would walk on Fifth Avenue, watching, with mingled
+sensations, the procession there.  The colour, the movement, the
+sensation of living in a world where every one was fabulously wealthy,
+was at once a stimulation and a despair.  Brougham after brougham passed,
+victoria after victoria, in which beautifully gowned women chatted gayly
+or sat back, impassive, amidst the cushions.  Some of them, indeed,
+looked bored, but this did not mar the general effect of pleasure and
+prosperity.  Even the people--well-dressed, too--in the hansom cabs were
+usually animated and smiling.  On the sidewalk athletic, clear-skinned
+girls passed her, sometimes with a man, sometimes in groups of two and.
+three, going in and out of the expensive-looking shops with the large,
+plate-glass windows.
+
+All of these women, apparently, had something definite to do, somewhere
+to go, some one to meet the very next, minute.  They protested to
+milliners and dressmakers if they were kept waiting, and even seemed
+impatient of time lost if one by chance bumped into them.  But Honora had
+no imperative appointments.  Lily Dallam was almost sure to be out, or
+going out immediately, and seemed to have more engagements than any one
+in New York.
+
+"I'm so sorry, my dear," she would say, and add reproachfully: "why
+didn't you telephone me you were coming?  If you had only let me know we
+might have lunched together or gone to the matinee.  Now I have promised
+Clara Trowbridge to go to a lunch party at her house."
+
+Mrs. Dallam had a most convincing way of saying such things, and in spite
+of one's self put one in the wrong for not having telephoned.  But if
+indeed Honora telephoned--as she did once or twice in her innocence--Lily
+was quite as distressed.
+
+"My dear, why didn't you let me know last night?  Trixy Brent has given
+Lula Chandos his box at the Horse Show, and Lula would never, never
+forgive me if I backed out."
+
+Although she lived in an apartment--in a most attractive one, to be sure
+--there could be no doubt about it that Lily Dallam was fashionable.  She
+had a way with her, and her costumes were marvellous.  She could have
+made her fortune either as a dressmaker or a house decorator, and she
+bought everything from "little" men and women whom she discovered
+herself.  It was a curious fact that all of these small tradespeople
+eventually became fashionable, too.  Lily was kind to Honora, and gave
+her their addresses before they grew to be great and insolent and
+careless whether one patronized them or not.
+
+While we are confessing the trials and weaknesses of our heroine, we
+shall have to admit that she read, occasionally, the society columns of
+the newspapers.  And in this manner she grew to have a certain
+familiarity with the doings of those favourites of fortune who had more
+delightful engagements than hours in which to fulfil them.  So intimate
+was Lily Dallam with many of these Olympians that she spoke of them by
+their first names, or generally by their nicknames.  Some two years after
+Honora's marriage the Dallams had taken a house in that much discussed
+colony of Quicksands, where sport and pleasure reigned supreme: and more
+than once the gown which Mrs. Sidney Dallam had worn to a polo match had
+been faithfully described in the public prints, or the dinners which she
+had given at the Quicksands Club.  One of these dinners, Honora learned,
+had been given in honour of Mr. Trixton Brent.
+
+"You ought to know Trixy, Honora," Mrs. Dallam declared; "he'd be crazy
+about you."
+
+Time passed, however, and Mrs. Dallam made no attempt to bring about this
+most desirable meeting.  When Honora and Howard went to town to dine with
+the Dallams, it was always at a restaurant, a 'partie carree'.  Lily
+Dallam thought it dull to dine at home, and they went to the theatre
+afterwards--invariably a musical comedy.  Although Honora did not care
+particularly for musical comedies, she always experienced a certain
+feverish stimulation which kept her wide awake on the midnight train to
+Rivington.  Howard had a most exasperating habit of dozing in the corner
+of the seat.
+
+"You are always sleepy when I have anything interesting to talk to you
+about," said Honora, "or reading stock reports.  I scarcely see anything
+at all of you."
+
+Howard roused himself.
+
+"Where are we now?" he asked.
+
+"Oh," cried Honora, "we haven't passed Hydeville.  Howard, who is Trixton
+Brent?"
+
+"What about him?" demanded her husband.
+
+"Nothing--except that he is one of Lily's friends, and she said she knew
+--I should like him.  I wish you would be more interested in people.  Who
+is he?"
+
+"One of the best-known operators in the market," Howard answered, and his
+air implied that a lack of knowledge of Mr. Brent was ignorance indeed;
+"a daring gambler.  He cornered cotton once, and raked in over a million.
+He's a sport, too."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"About forty-three."
+
+"Is he married?" inquired Honora.
+
+"He's divorced," said Howard.  And she had to be content with so much of
+the gentleman's biography, for her husband relapsed into somnolence
+again.  A few days later she saw a picture of Mr. Brent, in polo costume,
+in one of the magazines.  She thought him good-looking, and wondered what
+kind of a wife he had had.
+
+Honora, when she went to town for the day, generally could be sure of
+finding some one, at least, of the Holt family at home at luncheon time.
+They lived still in the same house on Madison Avenue to which Aunt Mary
+and Uncle Tom had been invited to breakfast on the day of Honora's
+arrival in her own country.  It had a wide, brownstone front, with a
+basement, and a high flight of steps leading up to the door.  Within,
+solemnity reigned, and this effect was largely produced by the
+prodigiously high ceilings and the black walnut doors and woodwork.
+On the second floor, the library where the family assembled was more
+cheerful.  The books themselves, although in black-walnut cases, and the
+sun pouring in, assisted in making this effect.
+
+Here, indeed, were stability and peace.  Here Honora remade the
+acquaintance of the young settlement worker, and of the missionary, now
+on the Presbyterian Board of Missions.  Here she charmed other friends
+and allies of the Holt family; and once met, somewhat to her surprise,
+two young married women who differed radically from the other guests of
+the house.  Honora admired their gowns if not their manners; for they
+ignored her, and talked to Mrs. Holt about plans for raising money for
+the Working Girl's Relief Society.
+
+"You should join us, my dear," said Mrs. Holt; "I am sure you would be
+interested in our work."
+
+"I'd be so glad to, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, "if only I didn't live in
+the country."
+
+She came away as usual, feeling of having run into a cul de sac.  Mrs.
+Holt's house was a refuge, not an outlet; and thither Honora directed her
+steps when a distaste for lunching alone or with some of her Rivington
+friends in the hateful, selfish gayety of a fashionable restaurant
+overcame her; or when her moods had run through a cycle, and an
+atmosphere of religion and domesticity became congenial.
+
+"Howard," she asked unexpectedly one evening, as he sat smoking beside
+the blue tiled mantel, "have you got on your winter flannels?"
+
+"I'll bet a hundred dollars to ten cents," he cried, "that you've been
+lunching with Mrs. Holt."
+
+"I think you're horrid," said Honora.
+
+Something must be said for her.  Domestic virtue, in the face of such
+mocking heresy, is exceptionally difficult of attainment.
+
+Mrs. Holt had not been satisfied with Honora's and Susan's accounts of
+the house in Stafford Park.  She felt called upon to inspect it.  And for
+this purpose, in the spring following Honora's marriage, she made a
+pilgrimage to Rivington and spent the day.  Honora met her at the
+station, and the drive homeward was occupied in answering innumerable
+questions on the characters, conditions, and modes of life of Honora's
+neighbours.
+
+"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, when they were seated before the fire
+after lunch, "I want you to feel that you can come to me for everything.
+I must congratulate you and Howard on being sensible enough to start your
+married life simply, in the country.  I shall never forget the little
+house in which Mr. Holt and I began, and how blissfully happy I was."
+The good lady reached out and took Honora's hand in her own.  "Not that
+your deep feeling for your husband will ever change.  But men are more
+difficult to manage as they grow older, my dear, and the best of them
+require a little managing for their own good.  And increased
+establishments bring added cares and responsibilities.  Now that I am
+here, I have formed a very fair notion of what it ought to cost you to
+live in such a place.  And I shall be glad to go over your housekeeping
+books with you, and tell you if you are being cheated as I dare say you
+are."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," Honora faltered, "I--I haven't kept any books.  Howard
+just pays the bills."
+
+"You mean to say he hasn't given you any allowance!" cried Mrs. Holt,
+aghast.  "You don't know what it costs to run this house?"
+
+"No," said Honora, humbly.  "I never thought of it.  I have no idea what
+Howard's income may be."
+
+"I'll write to Howard myself--to-night," declared Mrs. Holt.
+
+"Please don't, Mrs. Holt.  I'll--I'll speak to him," said Honora.
+
+"Very well, then," the good lady agreed, "and I will send you one of my
+own books, with my own system, as soon as I get home.  It is not your
+fault, my dear, it is Howard's.  It is little short of criminal of him.
+I suppose this is one of the pernicious results of being on the Stock
+Exchange.  New York is nothing like what it was when I was a girl--the
+extravagance by everybody is actually appalling.  The whole city is bent
+upon lavishness and pleasure.  And I am afraid it is very often the
+wives, Honora, who take the lead in prodigality.  It all tends, my dear,
+to loosen the marriage tie--especially this frightful habit of dining in
+hotels and restaurants."
+
+Before she left Mrs. Holt insisted on going over the house from top to
+bottom, from laundry to linen closet.  Suffice it to say that the
+inspection was not without a certain criticism, which must be passed
+over.
+
+"It is a little large, just for you and Howard, my dear," was her final
+comment.  "But you are wise in providing for the future."
+
+"For the future?" Honora repeated.
+
+Mrs. Holt playfully pinched her cheek.
+
+"When the children arrive, my dear, as I hope they will--soon," she said,
+smiling at Honora's colour.  "Sometimes it all comes back to me--my own
+joy when Joshua was a baby.  I was very foolish about him, no doubt.
+Annie and Gwendolen tell me so.  I wouldn't even let the nurse sit up
+with him when he was getting his teeth.  Mercy!"  she exclaimed, glancing
+at the enamelled watch on her gown,--for long practice had enabled her to
+tell the time upside down,--"we'll be late for the train, my dear."
+
+After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her
+window, looking out on the park.  The afternoon sunlight had the silvery
+tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway
+was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a
+vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines;
+and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped
+along the strip of sidewalk.
+
+Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had
+spoken?  It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking
+in her.  Children!  A home!  Why was it that she did not want children?
+Why should such a natural longing be absent in her?  Her mind went back
+to the days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their
+large families.  She had always associated marriage with children--until
+she got married.  And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the
+matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt's own experience of
+it: Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to
+her, it was faint and shadowy indeed?  Why were not her spirit and her
+hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?
+
+The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora
+did not mention it to her husband.  Circumstances were her excuse: he had
+had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked
+disinclination for the discussion of household matters.  It was not until
+the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between
+them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually
+uncommunicative and morose.  Just as electrical disturbances are said to
+be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain
+glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were
+synchronous with a depression in the market.
+
+"I wish you'd learn to go a little slow, Honora," he said one evening.
+"The bills are pretty stiff this month.  You don't seem to have any idea
+of the value of money."
+
+"Oh, Howard," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause for breath, "how can
+you say such a thing, when I save you so much?"
+
+"Save me so much!" he echoed.
+
+"Yes.  If I had gone to Ridley for this suit, he would have charged me
+two hundred dollars.  I took such pains--all on your account--to find a
+little man Lily Dallam told me about, who actually made it for one
+hundred and twenty-five."
+
+It was typical of the unreason of his sex that he failed to be impressed
+by this argument.
+
+"If you go on saving that way," said he, "we'll be in the hands of a
+receiver by Christmas.  I can't see any difference between buying one
+suit from Ridley--whoever he may be--and three from Lily Dallam's 'little
+man,' except that you spend more than three times as much money."
+
+"Oh, I didn't get three!--I never thought you could be so unjust, Howard.
+Surely you don't want me to dress like these Rivington women, do you?"
+
+"I can't see anything wrong with their clothes," he maintained.
+
+"And to think that I was doing it all to please you!" she cried
+reproachfully.
+
+"To please me!"
+
+"Who else?  We-we don't know anybody in New York.  And I wanted you to be
+proud of me.  I've tried so hard and--and sometimes you don't even look
+at my gowns, and say whether you like them and they are all for you."
+
+This argument, at least, did not fail of results, combined as it was with
+a hint of tears in Honora's voice.  Its effect upon Howard was peculiar--
+he was at once irritated, disarmed, and softened.  He put down his
+cigarette--and Honora was on his knee!  He could not deny her
+attractions.
+
+"How could you be so cruel, Howard?"  she asked.
+
+"You know you wouldn't like me to be a slattern.  It was my own idea to
+save money--I had a long talk about economy one day with Mrs. Holt.  And
+you act as though you had such a lot of it when we're in town for dinner
+with these Rivington people.  You always have champagne.  If--if you're
+poor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another
+dinner gown."
+
+"You've ordered another dinner gown!"
+
+"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind.  But if you're
+poor--"
+
+She had made a discovery--to reflect upon his business success was to
+touch a sensitive nerve.
+
+"I'm not poor," he declared.  "But the bottom's dropped out of the
+market, and even old Wing is economizing.  We'll have to put on the
+brakes for awhile, Honora."
+
+It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three
+visits to St. Louis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE NEW DOCTRINE
+
+This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine
+--spirit.  No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and
+contented with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation
+are fast finding out.  What would become of the Goddess of Liberty?  And
+let us mark well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is
+a goddess, not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century
+to realize a significance in the choice of her sex.  And--another
+discovery!--she is not a haus frau.  She is never domiciled, never
+fettered.  Even the French, clever as they are, have not conceived her:
+equality and fraternity are neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs
+at them as myths--for she is a laughing lady.  She alone of the three
+is real, and she alone is worshipped for attributes which she does not
+possess.  She is a coquette, and she is never satisfied.  If she were,
+she would not be Liberty: if she were, she would not be worshipped of
+men, but despised.  If they understood her, they would not care for her.
+And finally, she comes not to bring peace, but a sword.
+
+At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their
+fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband
+seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his
+"den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper.  He was in his
+dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a
+cigarette.  And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.
+
+Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so
+untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up?  I really believe you're
+getting fat.  And there," she added, critically touching a place on the
+top of his head, "is a bald spot!"
+
+"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.
+
+"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his
+face.  "For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more.
+I don't mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear--which is much
+worse.  You've got to notice me once in a while.  If you don't, I'll get
+another husband.  That's what women do in these days, you know, when the
+one they have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently
+agreeable.  I'm sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.
+
+He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the
+fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly
+idle.  A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs--
+of silver fox--were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve
+afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled
+with the dusky shadows.  Howard Spence experienced one of those
+startling, illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and
+self-absorbed husbands of his nation.  Psychologists have a name for such
+a phenomenon.  Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned,
+she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he
+had not, in truth, sufficiently prized.  Absurd though it was, the
+possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.
+
+"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he
+admitted.
+
+"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back.
+"If I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get
+fat and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have
+married you--never, never, never!  Oh, how young and simple and foolish
+I was!  And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated
+that you were going to conquer the world.  I believed you.  Wasn't I a
+little idiot not--to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a
+hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"
+
+He laughed, though it was a poor attempt.  And she read in his eyes,
+which had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.
+
+"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked.  There was an
+amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her
+of the honeymoon.  "I give you all the money you want or rather--you take
+it,--and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces--"
+
+"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem--which couldn't be
+much worse," she interrupted.  "And you stay in town all day and have no
+end of fun making money,--for you like to make money, and expect me to
+amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know
+enough to keep thin."
+
+He laughed again, but still uneasily.  Honora was still smiling.
+
+"What's got into you?" he demanded.  "I know you don't like Rivington,
+but you never broke loose this way before."
+
+"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone.
+I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway.  I've been thinking you
+over lately.  I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you
+cooks--and anybody could do that.  You don't seem to need me in any
+possible way.  All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play
+the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except
+strangers in restaurants.  I'm worth more than that.  I think I'll get
+married again."
+
+"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his
+breath.
+
+"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has
+something to him, some ambition.  The kind of man I thought I was getting
+when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again.  Women remarry a good
+deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why.  And the
+women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than
+they were at first.  I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon.
+She was radiant.  I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be
+tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears--
+and waste the talents she has.  It's wicked, when she might be the making
+of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."
+
+Her husband got up.
+
+"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."
+
+The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she
+would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of
+course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout
+the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly
+dissipated.  Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of
+determination he had never before heard--or, at least, noticed.
+
+There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a
+charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it.
+He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him.  At last he caught
+her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.
+
+"Howard--you'll knock over the lamp--you'll ruin my gown--and then you'll
+have to buy me another.  I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her
+head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me.  It's--it's an
+ultimatum.  There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily
+Dallam's tea--I won't tell you who they were--who would be glad to marry
+me in a minute."
+
+He drew her down on the arm of his chair.
+
+"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think
+you've got to have one."
+
+"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house.  I had no idea that so much could
+be done with so narrow a front.  It's all French, with mirrors and big
+white panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she
+got for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks.  The
+mirrors give it the effect of being larger than it really is.  I've only
+two criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can
+scarcely turn around in it without knocking something down--a photograph
+frame or a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs.  It was only
+a hideous, old-fashioned stone front when she bought it.  I suppose
+nobody but Reggie Farwell could have made anything out of it."
+
+"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.
+
+"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell?
+Lily was so lucky to get him--she says he wouldn't have done the house if
+he hadn't been such a friend of hers.  And he was coming to the tea this
+afternoon--only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't.
+She was so disappointed.  He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the
+Cecil Graingers'.  And he's going to do our house--some day."
+
+"Why not right away?" asked Howard.
+
+"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied.
+"We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."
+
+"To Quicksands!" he repeated.  But in spite of himself he experienced a
+feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.
+
+Honora sprang to her feet.
+
+"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for dinner-
+and you'll never be ready."
+
+"Hold on," he protested," I don't know about this Quicksands proposition.
+Let's talk it over a little more--"
+
+"We'll talk it over another time," she replied.  "But--remember my
+ultimatum.  And I am only taking you there for your own good."
+
+"For my own good!"
+
+"Yes.  To get you out of a rut.  To keep you from becoming commonplace
+and obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married
+me," she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that
+disturbing and tantalizing fire.  "It is my last desperate effort as a
+wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity."  Wherewith she
+disappeared into her room and closed the door.
+
+We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with
+commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on
+which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in
+no danger of being shaken down.  And in the same spirit we learn of other
+people's domestic cataclysms.  Howard Spence had had only a slight shock,
+but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity.  And during
+the week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the
+subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot
+like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.
+
+Either course might have saved him.  One trouble with the unfortunate
+man was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis.  He had
+laboured under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what
+they had been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether
+be had ever thought of that century.  Characteristically, he considered
+the troublesome affair chiefly from its business side.  His ambition, if
+we may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast,
+had been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora.  And she had
+contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that
+ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask
+himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living
+at Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which
+had as yet eluded him.  And, above all,--if the idea be put a little more
+crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the
+realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected.
+Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he
+insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might
+some day pack up and leave him.  One never could tell what a woman would
+do in these days.  Les sacrees femmes.
+
+We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental
+processes.  She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of
+his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom.  With
+instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.
+
+An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a
+day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there.  Although Lily
+had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of
+unusual warmth.  She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much
+to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting
+headache.  In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the
+evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's
+front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock.  Honora paused in the
+spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously
+from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement
+kitchens.  The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across
+the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the
+tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and
+driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb.  And
+out of it burst a resplendent lady--Mrs. Dallam.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried.  "Am I late?  I'm so sorry.  But I
+just couldn't help it.  It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault.  She insisted
+on my staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady
+Emmeline.  She's sweet.  I've seen her eight times."  Here she took
+Honora's arm, and faced her towards the street.  "What do you think of my
+turnout?  Isn't he a darling?"
+
+"Is he--full grown?" asked Honora.
+
+Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.
+
+"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,--although I had a terrible time finding
+him.  I mean the horse.  Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went
+abroad."
+
+"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for
+him.  My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with
+me!  He's crazy about Lula Chandos.  I tried so hard to get her to come
+to dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'.  You've no
+idea how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks.
+And so we've got just ourselves."
+
+Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad,
+when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.
+
+"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a
+song.  As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could
+do was to give me the brougham and the harness.  Is Master Sid asleep?"
+she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door.
+"I meant to have got home in time to kiss him."
+
+She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature
+boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked
+superciliously down from the walls.
+
+"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora?  You were such a
+success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about
+you, and why they hadn't heard of you.  My dear, how much did little
+Harris charge you for that dress?  If I had your face and neck and figure
+I'd die before I'd live in Rivington.  You're positively wasted, Honora.
+And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as
+beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."
+
+"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.
+
+"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful.
+Sid says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who
+is wonderful.  How do you like this dress?"
+
+"All your things are exquisite."
+
+"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.
+
+Honora, indeed, had not perjured herself.  Only the hypercritical, when
+Mrs. Dallam was dressed, had the impression of a performed miracle.  She
+was the most finished of finished products.  Her complexion was high and
+(be it added) natural, her hair wonderfully 'onduled', and she had withal
+the sweetest and kindest of smiles and the most engaging laughter in the
+world.  It was impossible not to love her.
+
+"Howard," she cried, when a little later they were seated at the table,
+"how mean of you to have kept Honora in a dead and alive place like
+Rivington all these years!  I think she's an angel to have stood it.  Men
+are beyond me.  Do you know what an attractive wife you've got?  I've
+just been telling her that there wasn't a woman at my tea who compared
+with her, and the men were crazy about her."
+
+"That's the reason I live down there," proclaimed Howard, as he finished
+his first glass of champagne.
+
+"Honora," demanded Mrs. Dallam, ignoring his bravado, "why don't you take
+a house at Quicksands?  You'd love it, and you'd look simply divine in a
+bathing suit.  Why don't you come down?"
+
+"Ask Howard," replied Honora, demurely.
+
+"Well, Lily, I'll own up I have been considering it a little," that
+gentleman admitted with gravity.  "But I haven't decided anything.  There
+are certain drawbacks--"
+
+"Drawbacks!"  exclaimed Mrs. Dallam.  "Drawbacks at Quicksands!  I'd like
+to know what they are.  Don't be silly, Howard.  You get more for your
+money there than any place I know."  Suddenly the light of an inspiration
+came into her eyes, and she turned to her husband.  "Sid, the Alfred Fern
+house is for rent, isn't it?"
+
+"I think it must be, Lily," replied Mr. Dallam.
+
+"Sometimes I believe I'm losing my mind," declared Mrs. Dallam.  "What an
+imbecile I was not to think of it!  It's a dear, Honora, not five minutes
+from the Club, with the sweetest furniture, and they just finished it
+last fall.  It would be positively wicked not to take it, Howard.  They
+couldn't have failed more opportunely.  I'm sorry for Alfred, but I
+always thought Louise Fern a little snob.  Sid, you must see Alfred down
+town the first thing in the morning and ask him what's the least he'll
+rent it for.  Tell him I wish to know."
+
+"But--my dear Lily--began Mr. Dallam apologetically.
+
+"There!" complained his wife, "you're always raising objections to my
+most charming and sensible plans.  You act as though you wanted Honora
+and Howard to stay in Rivington."
+
+"My dear Lily!" he protested again.  And words failing him, he sought by
+a gesture to disclaim such a sinister motive for inaction.
+
+"What harm can it do?"  she asked plaintively.  "Howard doesn't have to
+rent the house, although it would be a sin if he didn't.  Find out the
+rent in the morning, Sid, and we'll all four go down on Sunday and look
+at it, and lunch at the Quicksands Club.  I'm sure I can get out of my
+engagement at Laura Dean's--this is so important.  What do you say,
+Honora?"
+
+"I think it would be delightful," said Honora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+QUICKSANDS
+
+To convey any adequate idea of the community familiarly known as
+Quicksands a cinematograph were necessary.  With a pen we can only
+approximate the appearance of the shifting grains at any one time.
+Some households there were, indeed, which maintained a precarious though
+seemingly miraculous footing on the surface, or near it, going under for
+mere brief periods, only to rise again and flaunt men-servants in the
+face of Providence.
+
+There were real tragedies, too, although a casual visitor would never
+have guessed it.  For tragedies sink, and that is the end of them.  The
+cinematograph, to be sure, would reveal one from time to time, coming
+like a shadow across an endless feast, and gone again in a flash.  Such
+was what might appropriately be called the episode of the Alfred Ferns.
+After three years of married life they had come, they had rented; the
+market had gone up, they had bought and built--upon the sands.  The
+ancient farmhouse which had stood on the site had been torn down as
+unsuited to a higher civilization, although the great elms which had
+sheltered it had been left standing, in grave contrast to the twisted
+cedars and stunted oaks so much in evidence round about.
+
+The Ferns--or rather little Mrs. Fern--had had taste, and the new house
+reflected it.  As an indication of the quality of imagination possessed
+by the owners, the place was called "The Brackens."  There was a long
+porch on the side of the ocean, but a view of the water was shut off from
+it by a hedge which, during the successive ownerships of the adjoining
+property, had attained a height of twelve feet.  There was a little toy
+greenhouse connecting with the porch (an "economy "indulged in when the
+market had begun to go the wrong way for Mr. Fern).  Exile, although
+unpleasant, was sometimes found necessary at Quicksands, and even
+effective.
+
+Above all things, however, if one is describing Quicksands, one must not
+be depressing.  That is the unforgiveable sin there.  Hence we must touch
+upon these tragedies lightly.
+
+If, after walking through the entrance in the hedge that separated the
+Brackens from the main road, you turned to the left and followed a
+driveway newly laid out between young poplars, you came to a mass of
+cedars.  Behind these was hidden the stable.  There were four stalls, all
+replete with brass trimmings, and a box, and the carriage-house was made
+large enough for the break which Mr. Fern had been getting ready to buy
+when he had been forced, so unexpectedly, to change his mind.
+
+If the world had been searched, perhaps, no greater contrast to Rivington
+could have been found than this delightful colony of quicksands, full of
+life and motion and colour, where everybody was beautifully dressed and
+enjoying themselves.  For a whole week after her instalment Honora was in
+a continual state of excitement and anticipation, and the sound of wheels
+and voices on the highroad beyond the hedge sent her peeping to her
+curtains a dozen times a day.  The waking hours, instead of burdens,
+were so many fleeting joys.  In the morning she awoke to breathe a new,
+perplexing, and delicious perfume--the salt sea breeze stirring her
+curtains: later, she was on the gay, yellow-ochre beach with Lily Dallam,
+making new acquaintances; and presently stepping, with a quiver of fear
+akin to delight, into the restless, limitless blue water that stretched
+southward under a milky haze: luncheon somewhere, more new acquaintances,
+and then, perhaps, in Lily's light wood victoria to meet the train of
+trains.  For at half-past five the little station, forlorn all day long
+in the midst of the twisted cedars that grew out of the heated sand,
+assumed an air of gayety and animation.  Vehicles of all sorts drew up in
+the open space before it, wagonettes, phaetons, victorias, high wheeled
+hackney carts, and low Hempstead carts: women in white summer gowns and
+veils compared notes, or shouted invitations to dinner from carriage to
+carriage.  The engine rolled in with a great cloud of dust, the horses
+danced, the husbands and the overnight guests, grimy and brandishing
+evening newspapers, poured out of the special car where they had sat in
+arm-chairs and talked stocks all the way from Long Island City.  Some
+were driven home, it is true; some to the beach, and others to the
+Quicksands Club, where they continued their discussions over whiskey-and
+-sodas until it was time to have a cocktail and dress for dinner.
+
+Then came the memorable evening when Lily Dallam gave a dinner in honour
+of Honora, her real introduction to Quicksands.  It was characteristic of
+Lily that her touch made the desert bloom.  Three years before Quicksands
+had gasped to hear that the Sidney Dallams had bought the Faraday house--
+or rather what remained of it.
+
+"We got it for nothing," Lily explained triumphantly on the occasion of
+Honora's first admiring view.  "Nobody would look at it, my dear."
+
+It must have been this first price, undoubtedly, that appealed to Sidney
+Dallam, model for all husbands: to Sidney, who had had as much of an idea
+of buying in Quicksands as of acquiring a Scotch shooting box.  The
+"Faraday place" had belonged to the middle ages, as time is reckoned in
+Quicksands, and had lain deserted for years, chiefly on account of its
+lugubrious and funereal aspect.  It was on a corner.  Two "for rent"
+signs had fallen successively from the overgrown hedge: some fifty feet
+back from the road, hidden by undergrowth and in the tenebrous shades of
+huge larches and cedars, stood a hideous, two-storied house with a
+mansard roof, once painted dark red.
+
+The magical transformation of all this into a sunny, smiling, white villa
+with red-striped awnings and well-kept lawns and just enough shade had
+done no little towards giving to Lily Dallam that ascendency which she
+had acquired with such startling rapidity in the community.  When Honora
+and Howard drove up to the door in the deepening twilight, every window
+was a yellow, blazing square, and above the sound of voices rose a waltz
+from "Lady Emmeline" played with vigour on the piano.  Lily Dallam
+greeted Honora in the little room which (for some unexplained reason) was
+known as the library, pressed into service at dinner parties as the
+ladies' dressing room.
+
+"My dear, how sweet you look in that coral!  I've been so lucky
+to-night," she added in Honora's ear; "I've actually got Trixy Brent for
+you."
+
+Our heroine was conscious of a pleasurable palpitation as she walked with
+her hostess across the little entry to the door of the drawing-room,
+where her eyes encountered an inviting and vivacious scene.  Some ten or
+a dozen guests, laughing and talking gayly, filled the spaces between the
+furniture; an upright piano was embedded in a corner, and the lady who
+had just executed the waltz had swung around on the stool, and was
+smiling up at a man who stood beside her with his hand in his pocket.
+She was a decided brunette, neither tall nor short, with a suggestion of
+plumpness.
+
+"That's Lula Chandos," explained Lily Dallam in her usual staccato,
+following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses.  She's stopped
+mourning for her husband.  Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the
+sackcloth and kept the ashes.  He's awfully clever.  I don't wonder that
+she's crazy about him, do you?  He's standing beside her."
+
+Honora took a good look at the famous Trixy, who resembled a certain type
+of military Englishman.  He had close-cropped hair and a close-cropped
+mustache; and his grey eyes, as they rested amusedly on Mrs. Chandos,
+seemed to have in them the light of mockery.
+
+"Trixy!" cried his hostess, threading her way with considerable skill
+across the room and dragging Honora after her, "Trixy, I want to
+introduce you to Mrs. Spence.  Now aren't you glad you came!"
+
+It was partly, no doubt, by such informal introductions that Lily Dallam
+had made her reputation as the mistress of a house where one and all had
+such a good time.  Honora, of course, blushed to her temples, and
+everybody laughed--even Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"Glad," said Mr. Brent, with his eyes on Honora, "does not quite express
+it.  You usually have a supply of superlatives, Lily, which you might
+have drawn on."
+
+"Isn't he irrepressible?"  demanded Lily Dallam, delightedly, "he's
+always teasing."
+
+It was running through Honora's mind, while Lily Dallam's characteristic
+introductions of the other guests were in progress, that "irrepressible"
+was an inaccurate word to apply to Mr. Brent's manner.  Honora could not
+define his attitude, but she vaguely resented it.  All of Lily's guests
+had the air of being at home, and at that moment a young gentleman named
+Charley Goodwin, who was six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds,
+was loudly demanding cocktails.  They were presently brought by a rather
+harassed-looking man-servant.
+
+"I can't get over how well you look in that gown, Lula," declared Mrs.
+Dallam, as they went out to dinner. "Trixy, what does she remind you of?"
+
+"Cleopatra," cried Warry Trowbridge, with an attempt to be gallant.
+
+"Eternal vigilance," said Mr. Brent, and they sat down amidst the
+laughter, Lily Dallam declaring that he was horrid, and Mrs. Chandos
+giving him a look of tender reproach.  But he turned abruptly to Honora,
+who was on his other side.
+
+"Where did you drop down from, Mrs. Spence?"  he inquired.
+
+"Why do you take it for granted that I have dropped?" she asked sweetly.
+
+He looked at her queerly for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
+
+"Because you are sitting next to Lucifer," he said.  "It's kind of me to
+warn you, isn't it?"
+
+"It wasn't necessary," replied Honora.  "And besides, as a dinner
+companion, I imagine Lucifer couldn't be improved on."
+
+He laughed again.
+
+"As a dinner companion!" he repeated.  "So you would limit Lucifer to
+dinners?  That's rather a severe punishment, since we're neighbours."
+
+"How delightful to have Lucifer as one's neighbour," said Honora,
+avoiding his eyes.  "Of course I've been brought up to believe that he
+was always next door, so to speak, but I've never--had any proof of it
+until now."
+
+"Proof!" echoed Mr. Brent.  "Has my reputation gone before me?"
+
+"I smell the brimstone," said Honora.
+
+He derived, apparently, infinite amusement from this remark likewise.
+
+"If I had known I was to have the honour of sitting here, I should have
+used another perfume," he replied.  "I have several."
+
+It was Honora's turn to laugh.
+
+"They are probably for--commercial transactions, not for ladies," she
+retorted.  "We are notoriously fond of brimstone, if it is not too
+strong.  A suspicion of it."
+
+Her colour was high, and she was surprised at her own vivacity.  It
+seemed strange that she should be holding her own in this manner with the
+renowned Trixton Brent.  No wonder, after four years of Rivington, that
+she tingled with an unwonted excitement.
+
+At this point Mr. Brent's eye fell upon Howard, who was explaining
+something to Mrs. Trowbridge at the far end of the table.
+
+"What's your husband like?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+Honora was a little taken aback, but recovered sufficiently to retort:
+"You'd hardly expect me to give you an unprejudiced judgment."
+
+"That's true," he agreed significantly.
+
+"He's everything," added Honora, "that is to be expected in a husband."
+
+"Which isn't much, in these days," declared Mr. Brent.
+
+"On the contrary," said Honora.
+
+"What I should like to know is why you came to Quicksands," said Mr.
+Brent.
+
+"For a little excitement," she replied.  "So far, I have not been
+disappointed.  But why do you ask that question?"  she demanded, with a
+slight uneasiness.  "Why did you come here?"
+
+"Oh," he said, "you must remember that I'm--Lucifer, a citizen of the
+world, at home anywhere, a sort of 'freebooter.  I'm not here all the
+time--but that's no reflection on Quicksands.  May I make a bet with you,
+Mrs. Spence?"
+
+"What about?"
+
+"That you won't stay in Quicksands more than six months," he answered.
+
+"Why do you say that?" she asked curiously.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"My experience with your sex," he declared enigmatically, "has not been a
+slight one."
+
+"Trixy!" interrupted Mrs. Chandos at this juncture, from his other side,
+"Warry Trowbridge won't tell me whether to sell my Consolidated Potteries
+stock."
+
+"Because he doesn't know," said Mr. Brent, laconically, and readdressed
+himself to Honora, who had, however, caught a glimpse of Mrs. Chandos'
+face.
+
+"Don't you think it's time for you to talk to Mrs. Chandos?" she asked.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Well, for one reason, it is customary, out of consideration for the
+hostess, to assist in turning the table."
+
+"Lily doesn't care," he said.
+
+"How about Mrs. Chandos?  I have an idea that she does care."
+
+He made a gesture of indifference.
+
+"And how about me?" Honora continued.  "Perhaps--I'd like to talk to Mr.
+Dallam."
+
+"Have you ever tried it?" he demanded.
+
+Over her shoulder she flashed back at him a glance which he did not
+return.  She had never, to tell the truth, given her husband's partner
+much consideration.  He had existed in her mind solely as an obliging
+shopkeeper with whom Lily had unlimited credit, and who handed her over
+the counter such things as she desired.  And to-night, in contrast to
+Trixton Brent, Sidney Dallam suggested the counter more than ever before.
+He was about five and forty, small, neatly made, with little hands and
+feet; fast growing bald, and what hair remained to him was a jet black.
+His suavity of manner and anxious desire to give one just the topic that
+pleased had always irritated Honora.
+
+Good shopkeepers are not supposed to have any tastes, predilections, or
+desires of their own, and it was therefore with no little surprise that,
+after many haphazard attempts, Honora discovered Mr, Dallam to be
+possessed by one all-absorbing weakness.  She had fallen in love, she
+remarked, with little Sid on the beach, and Sidney Dallam suddenly became
+transfigured.  Was she fond of children?  Honora coloured a little, and
+said "yes."  He confided to her, with an astonishing degree of feeling,
+that it had been the regret of his life he had not had more children.
+Nobody, he implied, who came to his house had ever exhibited the proper
+interest in Sid.
+
+"Sometimes," he said, leaning towards her confidentially, "I slip
+upstairs for a little peep at him after dinner."
+
+"Oh," cried Honora, "if you're going to-night mayn't I go with you?  I'd
+love to see him in bed."
+
+"Of course I'll take you," said Sidney Dallam, and he looked at her so
+gratefully that she coloured again.
+
+"Honora," said Lily Dallam, when the women were back in the drawing-room,
+"what did you do to Sid?  You had him beaming--and he hates dinner
+parties."
+
+"We were talking about children," replied Honora, innocently.
+
+"Children!"
+
+"Yes," said Honora, "and your husband has promised to take me up to the
+nursery."
+
+"And did you talk to Trixy about children, too?" cried Lily, laughing,
+with a mischievous glance at Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"Is he interested in them?" asked Honora.
+
+"You dear!"  cried Lily, "you'll be the death of me.  Lula, Honora wants
+to know whether Trixy is interested in children."
+
+Mrs. Chandos, in the act of lighting a cigarette, smiled sweetly.
+
+"Apparently he is," she said.
+
+"It's time he were, if he's ever going to be," said Honora, just as
+sweetly.
+
+Everybody laughed but Mrs. Chandos, who began to betray an intense
+interest in some old lace in the corner of the room.
+
+"I bought it for nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Dallam, but she pinched
+Honora's arm delightedly.  "How wicked of you!" she whispered, "but it
+serves her right."
+
+In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other
+people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new
+to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.
+
+"How silly of you, Sid!" exclaimed his wife; "of course she doesn't want
+to go."
+
+"Indeed I do," protested Honora, rising with alacrity and following her
+host up the stairs.  At the end of a hallway a nurse, who had been
+reading beside a lamp, got up smilingly and led the way on tiptoe into
+the nursery, turning on a shaded electric light.  Honora bent over the
+crib.  The child lay, as children will, with his little yellow head
+resting on his arm.  But in a moment, as she stood gazing at him, he
+turned and opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she stooped and kissed
+him.
+
+"Where's Daddy?" he demanded.
+
+"We've waked him!" said Honora, remorsefully.
+
+"Daddy," said the child, "tell me a story."
+
+The nurse looked at Dallam reproachfully, as her duty demanded, and yet
+she smiled.  The noise of laughter reached them from below.
+
+"I didn't have any to-night," the child pleaded.
+
+"I got home late," Dallam explained to Honora, and, looking at the nurse,
+pleaded in his turn; "just one."
+
+"Just a tiny one," said the child.
+
+"It's against all rules, Mr. Dallam," said the nurse, "but--he's been
+very lonesome to-day."
+
+Dallam sat down on one side of him, Honora on the other.
+
+"Will you go to sleep right away if I do, Sid?" he asked.
+
+The child shut his eyes very tight.
+
+"Like that," he promised.
+
+It was not the Sidney Dallam of the counting-room who told that story,
+and Honora listened with strange sensations which she did not attempt to
+define.
+
+"I used to be fond of that one when I was a youngster," he explained
+apologetically to her as they went out, and little Sid had settled
+himself obediently on the pillow once more.  "It was when I dreamed,"
+he added, "of less prosaic occupations than the stock market."
+
+Sidney Dallam had dreamed!
+
+Although Lily Dallam had declared that to leave her house before midnight
+was to insult her, it was half-past eleven when Honora and her husband
+reached home.  He halted smilingly in her doorway as she took off her
+wrap and laid it over a chair.
+
+"Well, Honora," he asked, "how do you like--the whirl of fashion?"
+
+She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that
+sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.
+
+"What a dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said.  "I wonder
+what would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of
+time!  Own up that you like--a little variety in life."
+
+Being a man, he qualified his approval.
+
+"I didn't have a bad time," he admitted.  "I had a talk with Brent after
+dinner, and I think I've got him interested in a little scheme.  It's a
+strange thing that Sid Dallam was never able to do any business with him.
+If I can put this through, coming to Quicksands will have been worth
+while."  He paused a moment, and added: "Brent seems to have taken quite
+a shine to you, Honora."
+
+She dropped her arms, and going over to her dressing table, unclasped a
+pin on the front of her gown.
+
+"I imagine," she answered, in an indifferent tone, "that he acts so with
+every new woman he meets."
+
+Howard remained for a while in the doorway, seemingly about to speak.
+Then he turned on his heel, and she heard him go into his own room.
+
+Far into the night she lay awake, the various incidents of the evening,
+like magic lantern views, thrown with bewildering rapidity on the screen
+of her mind.  At last she was launched into life, and the days of her
+isolation gone by forever.  She was in the centre of things.  And yet--
+well, nothing could be perfect.  Perhaps she demanded too much.  Once or
+twice, in the intimate and somewhat uproarious badinage that had been
+tossed back and forth in the drawing-room after dinner, her delicacy had
+been offended: an air of revelry had prevailed, enhanced by the arrival
+of whiskey-and-soda on a tray.  And at the time she had been caught up by
+an excitement in the grip of which she still found herself.  She had been
+aware, as she tried to talk to Warren Trowbridge, of Trixton Brent's
+glance, and of a certain hostility from Mrs. Chandos that caused her now
+to grow warm with a kind of shame when she thought of it.  But she could
+not deny that this man had for her a fascination.  There was in him an
+insolent sense of power, of scarcely veiled contempt for the company
+in which he found himself.  And she asked herself, in this mood of
+introspection, whether a little of his contempt for Lily Dallam's
+guests had not been communicated from him to her.
+
+When she had risen to leave, he had followed her into the entry.  She
+recalled him vividly as he had stood before her then, a cigar in one hand
+and a lighted match in the other, his eyes fixed upon her with a
+singularly disquieting look that was tinged, however, with amusement.
+I'm coming to see you," he announced.
+
+"Do be careful," she had cried, "you'll burn yourself!"
+
+"That," he answered, tossing away the match, "is to be expected."
+
+She laughed nervously.
+
+"Good night," he added, "and remember my bet."
+
+What could he have meant when he had declared that she would not remain
+in Quicksands?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GAD AND MENI
+
+There was an orthodox place of worship at Quicksands, a temple not merely
+opened up for an hour or so on Sunday mornings to be shut tight during
+the remainder of the week although it was thronged with devotees on the
+Sabbath.  This temple, of course, was the Quicksands Club.  Howard Spence
+was quite orthodox; and, like some of our Puritan forefathers, did not
+even come home to the midday meal on the first day of the week.  But a
+certain instinct of protest and of nonconformity which may have been
+remarked in our heroine sent her to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea--by no means
+so well attended as the house of Gad and Meni.  She walked home in a
+pleasantly contemplative state of mind through a field of daisies, and
+had just arrived at the hedge m front of the Brackens when the sound of
+hoofs behind her caused her to turn.  Mr. Trixton Brent, very firmly
+astride of a restive, flea-bitten polo pony, surveyed her amusedly.
+
+Where have you been?" said he.
+
+"To church," replied Honora, demurely.
+
+"Such virtue is unheard of in Quicksands."
+
+"It isn't virtue," said Honora.
+
+"I had my doubts about that, too," he declared.
+
+"What is it, then?" she asked laughingly, wondering why he had such a
+faculty of stirring her excitement and interest.
+
+"Dissatisfaction," was his prompt reply.
+
+"I don't see why you say that," she protested.
+
+"I'm prepared to make my wager definite," said he.  "The odds are a
+thoroughbred horse against a personally knitted worsted waistcoat that
+you won't stay in Quicksands six months."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense," said Honora, "and besides, I can't
+knit."
+
+There was a short silence during which he didn't relax his disconcerting
+stare.
+
+"Won't you come in?"  she asked.  "I'm sorry Howard isn't home."
+
+"I'm not," he said promptly.  "Can't you come over to my box for lunch?
+I've asked Lula Chandos and Warry Trowbridge."
+
+It was not without appropriateness that Trixton Brent called his house
+the "Box."  It was square, with no pretensions to architecture whatever,
+with a porch running all the way around it.  And it was literally filled
+with the relics of the man's physical prowess cups for games of all
+descriptions, heads and skins from the Bitter Roots to Bengal, and masks
+and brushes from England.  To Honora there was an irresistible and
+mysterious fascination in all these trophies, each suggesting a finished
+--and some perhaps a cruel--performance of the man himself.  The cups
+were polished until they beat back the light like mirrors, and the
+glossy bear and tiger skins gave no hint of dying agonies.
+
+Mr. Brent's method with women, Honora observed, more resembled the noble
+sport of Isaac Walton than that of Nimrod, but she could not deny that
+this element of cruelty was one of his fascinations.  It was very evident
+to a feminine observer, for instance, that Mrs. Chandos was engaged in a
+breathless and altogether desperate struggle with the slow but inevitable
+and appalling Nemesis of a body and character that would not harmonize.
+If her figure grew stout, what was to become of her charm as an 'enfant
+gate'?  Her host not only perceived, but apparently derived great
+enjoyment out of the drama of this contest.  From self-indulgence to
+self-denial--even though inspired by terror--is a far cry.  And Trixton
+Brent had evidently prepared his menu with a satanic purpose.
+
+"What! No entree, Lula?  I had that sauce especially for you."
+
+"Oh, Trixy, did you really?  How sweet of you!"  And her liquid eyes
+regarded, with an almost equal affection, first the master and then the
+dish.  "I'll take a little," she said weakly; "it's so bad for my gout."
+
+"What," asked Trixton Brent, flashing an amused glance at Honora, "are
+the symptoms of gout, Lula?  I hear a great deal about that trouble these
+days, but it seems to affect every one differently."
+
+Mrs. Chandos grew very red, but Warry Trowbridge saved her.
+
+"It's a swelling," he said innocently.
+
+Brent threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"You haven't got it anyway, Warry," he cried.
+
+Mr. Trowbridge, who resembled a lean and greying Irish terrier,
+maintained that he had.
+
+"It's a pity you don't ride, Lula.  I understand that that's one of the
+best preventives--for gout.  I bought a horse last week that would just
+suit you--an ideal woman's horse.  He's taken a couple of blue ribbons
+this summer."
+
+"I hope you will show him to us, Mr. Brent," exclaimed Honora, in a
+spirit of kindness.
+
+"Do you ride?" he demanded.
+
+"I'm devoted to it," she declared.
+
+It was true.  For many weeks that spring, on Monday, Wednesday, and
+Friday mornings, she had gone up from Rivington to Harvey's Riding
+Academy, near Central Park.  Thus she had acquired the elements of the
+equestrian art, and incidentally aroused the enthusiasm of a riding-
+master.
+
+After Mrs. Chandos had smoked three of the cigarettes which her host
+specially imported from Egypt, she declared, with no superabundance of
+enthusiasm, that she was ready to go and see what Trixy had in the
+stables."  In spite of that lady's somewhat obvious impatience, Honora
+insisted upon admiring everything from the monogram of coloured sands so
+deftly woven on the white in the coach house, to the hunters and polo
+ponies in their rows of boxes.  At last Vercingetorix, the latest
+acquisition of which Brent had spoken, was uncovered and trotted
+around the ring.
+
+"I'm sorry, Trixy, but I've really got to leave," said Mrs. Chandos.
+"And I'm in such a predicament!  I promised Fanny Darlington I'd go over
+there, and it's eight miles, and both my horses are lame."
+
+Brent turned to his coachman.
+
+"Put a pair in the victoria right away and drive Mrs. Chandos to Mrs.
+Darlington's," he said.
+
+She looked at him, and her lip quivered.
+
+"You always were the soul of generosity, Trixy, but why the victoria?"
+
+"My dear Lula," he replied, "if there's any other carriage you prefer--?"
+
+Honora did not hear the answer, which at any rate was scarcely audible.
+She moved away, and her eyes continued to follow Vercingetorix as he
+trotted about the tan-bark after a groom.  And presently she was aware
+that Trixton Brent was standing beside her.
+
+"What do you think of him?" he asked.
+
+"He's adorable," declared Honora.  Would you like to try him?"
+
+"Oh--might I?  Sometime?"
+
+"Why not to-day--now?" he said.  "I'll send him over to your house and
+have your saddle put on him."
+
+Before Honora could protest Mrs. Chandos came forward.
+
+"It's awfully sweet of you, Trixy, to offer to send me to Fanny's, but
+Warry says he will drive me over.  Good-by, my dear," she added, holding
+out her hand to Honora.
+
+"I hope you enjoy your ride."
+
+Mr. Trowbridge's phaeton was brought up, Brent helped Mrs. Chandos in,
+and stood for a moment gazing after her.  Amusement was still in his eyes
+as he turned to Honora.
+
+"Poor Lula!" he said.  "Most women could have done it better than that--
+couldn't they?"
+
+"I think you were horrid to her," exclaimed Honora, indignantly.  "It
+wouldn't have hurt you to drive her to Mrs. Darlington's."
+
+It did not occur to her that her rebuke implied a familiarity at which
+they had swiftly but imperceptibly arrived.
+
+"Oh, yes, it would hurt me," said he.  "I'd rather spend a day in jail
+than drive with Lula in that frame of mind.  Tender reproaches, and all
+that sort of thing, you know although I can't believe you ever indulge in
+them.  Don't," he added.
+
+In spite of the fact that she was up in arms for her sex, Honora smiled.
+
+"Do you know," she said slowly, "I'm beginning to think you are a brute."
+
+"That's encouraging," he replied.
+
+"And fickle."
+
+"Still more encouraging.  Most men are fickle.  We're predatory animals."
+
+"It's just as well that I am warned," said Honora.  She raised her
+parasol and picked up her skirts and shot him a look.  Although he did
+not resemble in feature the great if unscrupulous Emperor of the French,
+he reminded her now of a picture she had once seen of Napoleon and a
+lady; the lady obviously in a little flutter under the Emperor's
+scrutiny.  The picture had suggested a probable future for the lady.
+
+"How long will it take you to dress?" he asked.
+
+"To dress for what?"
+
+"To ride with me."
+
+"I'm not going to ride with you," she said, and experienced a tingle of
+satisfaction from his surprise.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.
+
+"In the first place, because I don't want to; and in the second, because
+I'm expecting Lily Dallam."
+
+"Lily never keeps an engagement," he said.
+
+"That's no reason why I shouldn't," Honora answered.
+
+"I'm beginning to think you're deuced clever," said he.
+
+"How unfortunate for me!" she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed, although it was plain that he was obviously put out.  Honora
+was still smiling.
+
+"Deuced clever," he repeated.
+
+"An experienced moth," suggested Honora; "perhaps one that has been
+singed a little, once or twice.  Good-by--I've enjoyed myself immensely."
+
+She glanced back at him as she walked down the path to the roadway.  He
+was still standing where she had left him, his feet slightly apart, his
+hands in the pockets of his riding breeches, looking after her.
+
+Her announcement of an engagement with Mrs. Dallam had been, to put it
+politely, fiction.  She spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters
+home, pausing at periods to look out of the window.  Occasionally it
+appeared that her reflections were amusing.  At seven o'clock Howard
+arrived, flushed and tired after his day of rest.
+
+"By the way, Honora, I saw Trixy Brent at the Club, and he said you
+wouldn't go riding with him."
+
+"Do you call him Trixy to his face?" she asked.
+
+"What?  No--but everyone calls him Trixy.  What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied.  "Only--the habit every one has in Quicksands of
+speaking of people they don't know well by their nicknames seems rather
+bad taste."
+
+"I thought you liked Quicksands," he retorted.  "You weren't happy until
+you got down here."
+
+"It's infinitely better than Rivington," she said.
+
+"I suppose," he remarked, with a little irritation unusual in him, "that
+you'll be wanting to go to Newport next."
+
+"Perhaps," said Honora, and resumed her letter.  He fidgeted about the
+room for a while, ordered a cocktail, and lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Look here," he began presently, "I wish you'd be decent to Brent.  He's
+a pretty good fellow, and he's in with James Wing and that crowd of big
+financiers, and he seems to have taken a shine to me probably because
+he's heard of that copper deal I put through this spring."
+
+Honora thrust back her writing pad, turned in her chair, and faced him.
+
+"How 'decent' do you wish me to be?" she inquired.
+
+"How decent?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He regarded her uneasily, took the cocktail which the maid offered him,
+drank it, and laid down the glass.
+
+He had had before, in the presence of his wife, this vague feeling of
+having passed boundaries invisible to him.  In her eyes was a curious
+smile that lacked mirth, in her voice a dispassionate note that added to
+his bewilderment.
+
+"What do you mean, Honora?"
+
+"I know it's too much to expect of a man to be as solicitous about his
+wife as he is about his business," she replied.  "Otherwise he would
+hesitate before he threw her into the arms of Mr. Trixton Brent.  I warn
+you that he is very attractive to women."
+
+"Hang it," said Howard, "I can't see what you're driving at.  I'm not
+throwing you into his arms.  I'm merely asking you to be friendly with
+him.  It means a good deal to me--to both of us.  And besides, you can
+take care of yourself.  You're not the sort of woman to play the fool."
+
+"One never can tell," said Honora, "what may happen.  Suppose I fell in
+love with him?"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," he said.
+
+"I'm not so sure," she answered, meditatively, "that it is nonsense.  It
+would be quite easy to fall in love with him.  Easier than you imagine.
+curiously.  Would you care?" she added.
+
+"Care!" he cried; "of course I'd care. What kind of rot are you talking?"
+
+"Why would you care?"
+
+"Why?  What a darned idiotic question--"
+
+"It's not really so idiotic as you think it is," she said.  "Suppose I
+allowed Mr. Brent to make love to me, as he's very willing to do, would
+you be sufficiently interested to compete."
+
+"To what?"
+
+"To compete."
+
+"But--but we're married."
+
+She laid her hand upon her knee and glanced down at it.
+
+"It never occurred to me until lately," she said, "how absurd is the
+belief men still hold in these days that a wedding-ring absolves them
+forever from any effort on their part to retain their wives' affections.
+They regard the ring very much as a ball and chain, or a hobble to
+prevent the women from running away, that they may catch them whenever
+they may desire--which isn't often.  Am I not right?"
+
+He snapped his cigarette case.
+
+"Darn it, Honora, you're getting too deep for me!" he exclaimed.  "You
+never liked those, Browning women down at Rivington, but if this isn't
+browning I'm hanged if I know what it is.  An attack of nerves, perhaps.
+They tell me that women go all to pieces nowadays over nothing at all."
+
+"That's just it," she agreed, "nothing at all!"
+
+"I thought as much," he replied, eager to seize this opportunity of
+ending a conversation that had neither head nor tail, and yet was
+marvellously uncomfortable.  "There! be a good girl, and forget it."
+
+He stooped down suddenly to her face to kiss her, but she turned
+her face in time to receive the caress on the cheek.
+
+"The panacea!" she said.
+
+He laughed a little, boyishly, as he stood looking down at her.
+
+"Sometimes I can't make you out," he said.  "You've changed a good deal
+since I married you."
+
+She was silent.  But the thought occurred to her that a complete
+absorption in commercialism was not developing.
+
+"If you can manage it, Honora," he added with an attempt at lightness,
+"I wish you'd have a little dinner soon, and ask Brent.  Will you?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied, "would give me greater pleasure."
+
+He patted her on the shoulder and left the room whistling.  But she sat
+where she was until the maid came in to pull the curtains and turn on the
+lights, reminding her that guests were expected.
+
+                    .....................
+
+Although the circle of Mr. Brent's friends could not be said to include
+any university or college presidents, it was, however, both catholic and
+wide.  He was hail fellow, indeed, with jockeys and financiers, great
+ladies and municipal statesmen of good Irish stock.  He was a lion who
+roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of which it
+would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred Quicksands: a
+man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular, nevertheless.
+Many ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him: some of them he
+had cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest of inspections,
+disdainfully thrust aside with his paw.
+
+This instinct for lion taming, which the most spirited of women possess,
+is, by the way, almost inexplicable to the great majority of the male
+sex.  Honora had it, as must have been guessed.  But however our faith in
+her may be justified by the ridiculous ease of her previous conquests, we
+cannot regard without trepidation her entrance into the arena with this
+particular and widely renowned king of beasts.  Innocence pitted against
+sophistry and wile and might.
+
+Two of the preliminary contests we have already witnessed.  Others, more
+or less similar, followed during a period of two months or more.  Nothing
+inducing the excessive wagging of tongues,--Honora saw to that, although
+Mrs. Chandos kindly took the trouble to warn our heroine,--a scene for
+which there is unfortunately no space in this chronicle; an entirely
+amicable, almost honeyed scene, in Honora's boudoir.  Nor can a complete
+picture of life at Quicksands be undertaken.  Multiply Mrs. Dallam's
+dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club by
+twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it.  It was not precisely
+intellectual.  "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are
+blank in history's book."  Let us leave it at that.
+
+Late one afternoon in August Honora was riding homeward along the ocean
+road.  The fragrant marshes that bordered it were a vivid green under the
+slanting rays of the sun, and she was gazing across them at the breakers
+crashing on the beach beyond.  Trixton Brent was beside her.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't stare at me so," she said, turning to him suddenly;
+"it is embarrassing."
+
+"How did you know I was looking at you?" he asked.
+
+"I felt it."
+
+He drew his horse a little nearer.
+
+"Sometimes you're positively uncanny," she added.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I rather like that castles-in-Spain expression you wore," he declared.
+
+"Castles in Spain?"
+
+"Or in some other place where the real estate is more valuable.
+Certainly not in Quicksands."
+
+"You are uncanny," proclaimed Honora, with conviction.
+
+"I told you you wouldn't like Quicksands," said he.
+
+"I've never said I didn't like it," she replied.  "I can't see why you
+assume that I don't."
+
+"You're ambitious," he said.  "Not that I think it a fault, when it's
+more or less warranted.  Your thrown away here, and you know it."
+
+She made him a bow from the saddle.
+
+"I have not been without a reward, at least," she answered, and looked at
+him.
+
+"I have," said he.
+
+Honora smiled.
+
+"I'm going to be your good angel, and help you get out of it," he
+continued.
+
+"Get out of what?"
+
+"Quicksands."
+
+"Do you think I'm in danger of sinking?" she asked.  "And is it
+impossible for me to get out alone, if I wished to?"
+
+"It will be easier with my help," he answered.  "You're clever enough to
+realize that--Honora."
+
+She was silent awhile.
+
+"You say the most extraordinary things," she remarked presently.
+"Sometimes I think they are almost--"
+
+"Indelicate," he supplied.
+
+She coloured.
+
+"Yes, indelicate."
+
+"You can't forgive me for sweeping away your rose-coloured cloud of
+romance," he declared, laughing.  "There are spades in the pack, however
+much you may wish to ignore 'em.  You know very well you don't like these
+Quicksands people.  They grate on your finer sensibilities, and all that
+sort of thing.  Come, now, isn't it so?"
+
+She coloured again, and put her horse to the trot.
+
+"Onwards and upwards," he cried.  "Veni, vidi, vici, ascendi."
+
+"It seems to me," she laughed, "that so much education is thrown away on
+the stock market."
+
+"Whether you will be any happier higher up," he went on, "God knows.
+Sometimes I think you ought to go back to the Arcadia you came from.
+Did you pick out Spence for an embryo lord of high finance?"
+
+"My excuse is," replied Honora, "that I was very young, and I hadn't met
+you."
+
+Whether the lion has judged our heroine with astuteness, or done her a
+little less than justice, must be left to the reader.  Apparently he is
+accepting her gentle lashings with a meek enjoyment.  He assisted her to
+alight at her own door, sent the horses home, and offered to come in and
+give her a lesson in a delightful game that was to do its share in the
+disintegration of the old and tiresome order of things--bridge.  The
+lion, it will be seen, was self-sacrificing even to the extent of double
+dummy.  He had picked up the game with characteristic aptitude abroad--
+Quicksands had yet to learn it.
+
+Howard Spence entered in the midst of the lesson.
+
+"Hello, Brent," said he, genially, "you may be interested to know I got
+that little matter through without a hitch to-day."
+
+"I continue to marvel at you," said the lion, and made it no trumps.
+
+Since this is a veracious history, and since we have wandered so far from
+home and amidst such strange, if brilliant scenes, it must be confessed
+that Honora, three days earlier, had entered a certain shop in New York
+and inquired for a book on bridge.  Yes, said the clerk, he had such a
+treatise, it had arrived from England a week before.  She kept it looked
+up in her drawer, and studied it in the mornings with a pack of cards
+before her.
+
+Given the proper amount of spur, anything in reason can be mastered.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Happy the people whose annals are blank in history's book
+Resented the implication of possession
+
+
+
+
+
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