in her usual rattling, rambling voice, and brought out this
declaration with a curious absence of resentment.

"You talk about advantage," said Bernard. "I don't see what advantage it
is to you to say that."

"I want to--I must--I will! That 's the advantage!" This came out with a
sudden sharpness of tone; she spoke more excitedly. "He does n't care a
button for me, and he never did! I don't know what he married me for. He
cares for something else--he thinks of something else. I don't know what
it is--I suppose it 's chemistry!"

These words gave Bernard a certain shock, but he had his intelligence
sufficiently in hand to contradict them with energy.

"You labor under a monstrous delusion," he exclaimed. "Your husband
thinks you fascinating."

This epithet, pronounced with a fine distinctness, was ringing in the
air when the door opened and Gordon came in. He looked for a moment from
Bernard to his wife, and then, approaching the latter, he said, softly--

"Do you know that he leaves us to-morrow?"

CHAPTER XVIII

Bernard left then and went to California; but when he arrived there
he asked himself why he had come, and was unable to mention any other
reason than that he had announced it. He began to feel restless again,
and to drift back to that chronic chagrin which had accompanied him
through his long journey in the East. He succeeded, however, in keeping
these unreasonable feelings at bay for some time, and he strove to
occupy himself, to take an interest in Californian problems. Bernard,
however, was neither an economist nor a cattle-fancier, and he found
that, as the phrase is, there was not a great deal to take hold of. He
wandered about, admired the climate and the big peaches, thought a while
of going to Japan, and ended by going to Mexico. In this way he passed
several months, and justified, in the eyes of other people at least,
his long journey across the Continent. At last he made it again, in the
opposite sense. He went back to New York, where the summer had already
begun, and here he invented a solution for the difficulty presented by
life to a culpably unoccupied and ill-regulated man. The solution was
not in the least original, and I am almost ashamed to mention so stale
and conventional a device. Bernard simply hit upon the plan of returning
to Europe. Such as it was, however, he carried it out with an audacity
worthy of a better cause, and was sensibly happier since he had made up
his