we don't go to France, after all, Hugh?"

"Not go to France!" I exclaimed. "Are you tired of the trip?"

"Oh, Hugh!" Her voice caught. "I could go on, always, if you were
content."

"And--what makes you think that I'm not content?"

Her smile had in it just a touch of wistfulness.

"I understand you, Hugh, better than you think. You want to get back to
your work, and--and I should be happier. I'm not so silly and so ignorant
as to think that I can satisfy you always. And I'd like to get settled at
home,--I really should."

There surged up within me a feeling of relief. I seized her hand as it
lay on the table.

"We'll come abroad another time, and go to France," I said. "Maude,
you're splendid!"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no, I'm not."

"You do satisfy me," I insisted. "It isn't that at all. But I think,
perhaps, it would be wiser to go back. It's rather a crucial time with
me, now that Mr. Watling's in Washington. I've just arrived at a position
where I shall be able to make a good deal of money, and later on--"

"It isn't the money, Hugh," she cried, with a vehemence which struck me
as a little odd. "I sometimes think we'd be a great deal happier
without--without all you are going to make."

I laughed.

"Well, I haven't made it yet."

She possessed the frugality of the Hutchinses. And some times my
lavishness had frightened her, as when we had taken the suite of rooms we
now occupied.

"Are you sure you can afford them, Hugh?" she had asked when we first
surveyed them.

I began married life, and carried it on without giving her any conception
of the state of my finances. She had an allowance from the first.

As the steamer slipped westward my spirits rose, to reach a climax of
exhilaration when I saw the towers of New York rise gleaming like huge
stalagmites in the early winter sun. Maude likened them more happily--to
gigantic ivory chessmen. Well, New York was America's chessboard, and the
Great Players had already begun to make moves that astonished the world.
As we sat at breakfast in a Fifth Avenue hotel I ran my eye eagerly over
the stock-market reports and the financial news, and rallied Maude for a
lack of spirits.

"Aren't you glad to be home?" I asked her, as we sat in a hansom.

"Of course I am, Hugh!" she protested. "But--I can't look upon New York
as home, somehow. It frightens me."

I laughed indulgently.

"You'll get used to it," I said. "We'll be coming here a great deal, off