. He came to be alluded to as one of the prominent young business
men. Even before Marion Averley married him people were saying that he
would make money.

They liked her for marrying him. They said it showed that there was more
to her than they had supposed, that there was warmth she did not show.
For she must have married him for the good old reason that she had
fallen in love with him. Their engagement brought Stuart Williams into a
new social conspicuousness, though he had the qualities--in particular a
certain easy, sunny manner--that had made him popular all along. During
the engagement people spoke of the way Marion seemed to thaw out; they
liked her much better than they had in the days of being awed by her
sophistication, her aloofness.

After their marriage the Williams' were leaders of the young married
set. Their house was the gayest place in town; Stuart Williams had the
same talent in hospitality that he had for business--growing, perhaps,
out of the same qualities. He was very generally and really deeply
liked; they called him a good fellow, a lovable chap. For about four
years people spoke of it as a successful marriage, though there were no
children. And then, just what it was no one knew, but the Williams'
began to seem different, going to their house became a different thing.
The people who knew Marion best had a feeling that she was not the same
after the visit of that gay little Southern matron whom she had known in
school at Washington. It was very gay at the Williams' through that
visit, and then Marion said she was tired out and they were going to
draw in for a little, and somehow they just never seemed to emerge from
that drawing in. Her friends wondered; they talked about how Stuart and
this friend of Marion's had certainly hit it off wonderfully; some of
them suspected, but Marion gave no confidences. She seemed to carry her
head higher than ever; in fact, in some curious way she seemed to become
Marion Averley again while Stuart Williams concentrated more and more
upon the various business affairs he was being drawn into. It came about
that the Williams' were less and less mentioned when the subject of
happy marriages was up, and when time had swung Ruth Holland and Edith
Lawrence into the social life of the town it was the analytical rather
than the romantically minded citizens who were talking about them.

Perhaps life would have been quite another thing for a number of people
if the Coun