_!" she answered; and with a reproachful
"Owen!" his wife followed her flight to her room.

XI.

Elmore went out for a long walk, from which he returned disconsolate at
dinner. He was one of those people, common enough in our Puritan
civilization, who would rather forego any pleasure than incur the
reaction which must follow with all the keenness of remorse; and he
always mechanically pitied (for the operation was not a rational one)
such unhappy persons as he saw enjoying themselves. But he had not meant
to add bitterness to the anguish which Lily would necessarily feel in
retrospect of the night's gayety; he had not known that he was
recognizing, by those unsparing words of his, the nervous misgivings in
the girl's heart. He scarcely dared ask, as he sat down at table with
Mrs. Elmore alone, whether Lily were asleep.

"Asleep?" she echoed, in a low tone of mystery. "I hope so."

"Celia, Celia!" he cried in despair. "What shall I do? I feel terribly
at what I said to her."

"Sh! At what you said to her? Oh yes! Yes, that was cruel. But there is
so much else, poor child, that I had forgotten that."

He let his plate of soup stand untasted. "Why--why," he faltered,
"didn't she enjoy herself?" And a historian of Venice, whose mind should
have been wholly engaged in philosophizing the republic's difficult
past, hung abjectly upon the question whether a young girl had or had
not had a good time at a ball.

"Yes. Oh, yes! She _enjoyed_ herself--if that's all you require,"
replied his wife. "Of course she wouldn't have stayed so late if she
hadn't enjoyed herself."

"No," he said in a tone which he tried to make leading; but his wife
refused to be led by indirect methods. She ate her soup, but in a manner
to carry increasing bitterness to Elmore with every spoonful.

"Come, Celia!" he cried at last, "tell me what has happened. You know
how wretched this makes me. Tell me it, whatever it is. Of course, I
must know it in the end. Are there any new complications?"

"No _new_ complications," said his wife, as if resenting the word. "But
you make such a bugbear of the least little matter that there's no
encouragement to tell you anything."

"Excuse me," he retorted, "I haven't made a bugbear of this."

"You haven't had the opportunity." This was so grossly unjust that
Elmore merely shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. When it
finally appeared that he was not going to ask anything more, his wife
added: "If y