fog--"suppose we don't go to France, after all, Hugh?"

"Not go to France!" I exclaimed. "Are you tired of the trip?"

"Oh, Hugh!" Her voice caught. "I could go on, always, if you were
content."

"And--what makes you think that I'm not content?"

Her smile had in it just a touch of wistfulness.

"I understand you, Hugh, better than you think. You want to get back
to your work, and--and I should be happier. I'm not so silly and so
ignorant as to think that I can satisfy you always. And I'd like to get
settled at home,--I really should."

There surged up within me a feeling of relief. I seized her hand as it
lay on the table.

"We'll come abroad another time, and go to France," I said. "Maude,
you're splendid!"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no, I'm not."

"You do satisfy me," I insisted. "It isn't that at all. But I think,
perhaps, it would be wiser to go back. It's rather a crucial time
with me, now that Mr. Watling's in Washington. I've just arrived at a
position where I shall be able to make a good deal of money, and later
on--"

"It isn't the money, Hugh," she cried, with a vehemence which struck
me as a little odd. "I sometimes think we'd be a great deal happier
without--without all you are going to make."

I laughed.

"Well, I haven't made it yet."

She possessed the frugality of the Hutchinses. And some times my
lavishness had frightened her, as when we had taken the suite of rooms
we now occupied.

"Are you sure you can afford them, Hugh?" she had asked when we first
surveyed them.

I began married life, and carried it on without giving her any
conception of the state of my finances. She had an allowance from the
first.

As the steamer slipped westward my spirits rose, to reach a climax of
exhilaration when I saw the towers of New York rise gleaming like huge
stalagmites in the early winter sun. Maude likened them more happily--to
gigantic ivory chessmen. Well, New York was America's chessboard, and
the Great Players had already begun to make moves that astonished the
world. As we sat at breakfast in a Fifth Avenue hotel I ran my eye
eagerly over the stock-market reports and the financial news, and
rallied Maude for a lack of spirits.

"Aren't you glad to be home?" I asked her, as we sat in a hansom.

"Of course I am, Hugh!" she protested. "But--I can't look upon New York
as home, somehow. It frightens me."

I laughed indulgently.

"You'll get used to it," I said. "We'll be coming here