d seemed to be reaching out for a great emptiness. But
I looked over all the hotel and steamship folders I could find and it
seemed impossible to get good accommodation, so we came to New York. I
had a great deal of shopping to do for our new house, so I could not be
much with John, but I felt it was not right to neglect him, so I drove
him somewhere in a taxi each morning and called for him again in the
evening. One day I took him to the Metropolitan Museum, and another day
I left him at the Zoo, and another day at the aquarium. John seemed very
happy and quiet among the fishes.

So presently we came back home, and I spent many busy days in fixing and
arranging our new house. I had the drawing-room done in blue, and the
dining-room all in dark panelled wood, and a boudoir upstairs done in
pink and white enamel to match my bedroom and dressing-room. There was a
very nice little room in the basement next to the coal cellar that I
turned into a "den" for John, so that when he wanted to smoke he could
go down there and do it. John seemed to appreciate his den at once, and
often would stay down there so long that I had to call to him to come
up.

When I look back on those days they seem very bright and happy. But it
was not very long before a change came. I began to realize that John was
neglecting me. I noticed it at first in small things. I don't know just
how long it was after our marriage that John began to read the newspaper
at breakfast. At first he would only pick it up and read it in little
bits, and only on the front page. I tried not to be hurt at it, and
would go on talking just as brightly as I could, without seeming to
notice anything. But presently he went on to reading the inside part of
the paper, and then one day he opened up the financial page and folded
the paper right back and leant it against the sugar-bowl.

I could not but wonder whether John's love for me was what it had been.
Was it cooling? I asked myself. And what was cooling it? It hardly
seemed possible, when I looked back to the wild passion with which he
had proposed to me on the garden bench, that John's love was waning. But
I kept noticing different little things. One day in the spring-time I
saw John getting out a lot of fishing tackle from a box and fitting it
together. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said that he was
going to fish. I went to my room and had a good cry. It seemed dreadful
that he could neglect his wife for a