s of it. "What _is_ the matter?" he would
repeat. "She is farther away than in Paris, where the temptation to this
sort of nonsense was at least plausible." And he grew silent with her and
shut himself in alone during the evening hours which he could not spend
at the university. She knew why, knew also that he was right, ceased to
bore herself and irritate him with attempts to make the Villa d'Orsay the
social center of the university. But she continued to waste her days in
the inane pastimes of Saint X's fashionable world, though ashamed of
herself and disgusted with her mode of life. For snobbishness is
essentially a provincial vice, due full as much to narrowness as to
ignorance; and, thus, it is most potent in the small "set" in the small
town. In the city even the narrowest are compelled to at least an
occasional glimpse of wider horizons; but in the small town only the
vigilant and resolute ever get so much as a momentary point of view. She
told herself, in angry attempt at self-excuse, that he ought to take her
in hand, ought to snatch her away from that which she had not the courage
to give up of herself. Yet she knew she would hate him should he try to
do it. She assumed that was the reason he didn't; and it was part of the
reason, but a lesser part than his unacknowledged, furtive fear of what
he might discover as to his own feelings toward her, were there just then
a casting up and balancing of their confused accounts with each other.

Both were relieved, as at a crisis postponed, when it became necessary
for him to go abroad again immediately. "I don't see how _you_ can
leave," said he, thus intentionally sparing her a painful effort in
saying what at once came into the mind of each.

"We could cable Mrs. Dorsey," she suggested lamely. She was at the Louis
Quinze desk in the Louis Quinze sitting room, and her old gold negligee
matched in charmingly, and the whole setting brought out the sheen,
faintly golden, over her clear skin, the peculiarly fresh and intense
shade of her violet eyes, the suggestion of gold in her thick hair, with
its wan, autumnal coloring, such as one sees in a field of dead ripe
grain. She was doing her monthly accounts, and the showing was not
pleasant. She was a good housekeeper, a surprisingly good manager; but
she did too much entertaining for their income.

Dory was too much occupied with the picture she made as she sat there to
reply immediately. "I doubt," he finally replied, "