."

It was Betty, with that lamentable lack of delicacy which George had
pointed out to her, who had not been ready to leave.

"You will have to let me be the judge of what I should or should not
have done," said George. This piece of advice Genevieve ignored.

"Why did you send her away?" she demanded.

"I sent her away, if you want to know, for her insolence and her damned
bad taste. If you think--working in my office as she was--it's decent or
proper on her part to be active in a campaign that is against me----"

"You mean because she's a suffragist? You sent her away for _that_! Why,
really, that's _tyranny_! It's like my sending away some one working for
me for her beliefs----"

They stood staring at each other, not questioningly as they had
yesterday, but as enemies,--the greater enemies that they so loved each
other.

Because of that each word of unkindness was a doubled-edged sword. They
quarreled. It was the first time that they had seen each other without
illusion. They had been to each other the ideal, the lover, husband,
wife.

Now, in the dismay of his amazement in finding himself quarreling with
the perfect wife, a vagrant memory came to George that he had heard
that Genevieve had a hot temper. She certainly had. He didn't notice
how handsome she looked kindled with anger. He only knew that the rose
garden in which they lived was being destroyed by their angry hands;
that the very foundation of the life they had been leading was being
undermined.

The time of mirage and glamour was over. He had ceased being a hero and
an ideal, and why? Because, forgetting his past life, his record, his
achievement, Genevieve obstinately insisted on identifying him with one
single mistake. He was willing to concede it was a mistake. She had not
only identified him with it, but she had called him a number of wounding
things.

"Tyrant" was the least of them, and, worse than that, she had, in a
very fury of temper, told him that he "needn't take that pompous"--yes,
"pompous" had been her unpleasant word--"tone" with her, when he
had inquired, more in sorrow than in anger, if this were really his
Genevieve speaking.

There was a pause in their hostilities. They looked at each other
aghast. Aghast, they had perceived the same awful truth. Each saw that
love [Illustration: "You mean because she's a suffragist? You sent her
away for _that_? Why, really, that's _tyranny_!"] in the other's heart
was dead, and that th