people knew her when she lived in New York. To
most of the women who went to the reading she was a mere name, too
remote to have any personality. With me, of course, it was different--"

Glennard gave her a startled look. "Different? Why different?"

"Since you were her friend--"

"Her friend!" He stood up impatiently. "You speak as if she had had only
one--the most famous woman of her day!" He moved vaguely about the room,
bending down to look at some books on the table. "I hope," he added,
"you didn't give that as a reason, by the way?"

"A reason?"

"For not going. A woman who gives reasons for getting out of social
obligations is sure to make herself unpopular or ridiculous.

The words were uncalculated; but in an instant he saw that they had
strangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. He felt her
close on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a flash that showed
the hand on the trigger.

"I seem," she said from the threshold, "to have done both in giving my
reason to you."

The fact that they were dining out that evening made it easy for him to
avoid Alexa till she came downstairs in her opera-cloak. Mrs. Touchett,
who was going to the same dinner, had offered to call for her, and
Glennard, refusing a precarious seat between the ladies' draperies,
followed on foot. The evening was interminable. The reading at the
Waldorf, at which all the women had been present, had revived the
discussion of the "Aubyn Letters" and Glennard, hearing his wife
questioned as to her absence, felt himself miserably wishing that she
had gone, rather than that her staying away should have been remarked.
He was rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the "Letters" were
concerned. He could no longer hear them mentioned without suspecting
a purpose in the allusion; he even yielded himself for a moment to
the extravagance of imagining that Mrs. Dresham, whom he disliked, had
organized the reading in the hope of making him betray himself--for he
was already sure that Dresham had divined his share in the transaction.

The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner tumult was as endless
and unavailing as efforts made in a nightmare. He lost all sense of what
he was saying to his neighbors and once when he looked up his wife's
glance struck him cold.

She sat nearly opposite him, at Flamel's side, and it appeared to
Glennard that they had built about themselves one of those airy barriers
of talk behin