f that general
lowering of the key that seems needful to the maintenance of the
matrimonial duet. What woman ever retained her abstract sense of justice
where another woman was concerned? Possibly the thought that he had
profited by Mrs. Aubyn's tenderness was not wholly disagreeable to his
wife.

When the pressure of work began to lessen, and he found himself, in the
lengthening afternoons, able to reach home somewhat earlier, he noticed
that the little drawing-room was always full and that he and his wife
seldom had an evening alone together. When he was tired, as often
happened, she went out alone; the idea of giving up an engagement to
remain with him seemed not to occur to her. She had shown, as a girl,
little fondness for society, nor had she seemed to regret it during the
year they had spent in the country. He reflected, however, that he was
sharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early
ardors of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any
rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeats
the gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had come over her. In
one sense it was a happy one, since she had grown, if not handsomer,
at least more vivid and expressive; her beauty had become more
communicable: it was as though she had learned the conscious exercise of
intuitive attributes and now used her effects with the discrimination of
an artist skilled in values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now
rated himself) the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Her
attempts at lightness lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped
him by laughing like Julia Armiger; but he had enough imagination
to perceive that, in respect of the wife's social arts, a husband
necessarily sees the wrong side of the tapestry.

In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found himself
strangely relieved of all concern as to his wife's feelings for Flamel.
From an Olympian pinnacle of indifference he calmly surveyed their
inoffensive antics. It was surprising how his cheapening of his wife put
him at ease with himself. Far as he and she were from each other they
yet had, in a sense, the tacit nearness of complicity. Yes, they were
accomplices; he could no more be jealous of her than she could despise
him. The jealousy that would once have seemed a blur on her whiteness
now appeared like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed....

Glenn