Part 31 (1/2)

”He always does tell her. But----”

”But--what?”

”She doesn't always send him away. Poor fellow! Still, he went into it with his eyes open.”

”He was very nice. He told it in a roundabout way. And I wasn't a bit afraid that he'd--he'd--you know. But I got to thinking about how I'd feel if he did--did touch me. And it made me--nervous.”

There was a long pause, then she went on: ”I wonder how you'd feel about touching another woman?”

”I? Dear me, I wonder! I never thought. You see I'm such a domestic, unattractive creature----”

”Don't laugh at me, please,” she pleaded.

”I'm not laughing. Underneath, I'm thinking--thinking what I would do if I met you and lost you. It's very black on the Atlantic for one pair of eyes to-night.”

”And the worst of it is,” she said, ”that my vanity is flattered and I'm not really sorry for him.”

”Rather proud of her conquest, is she?”

”Yes, it pleased me to have him care.”

”She likes to think that he'll carry his broken heart to the grave, does she?”

”Yes. Isn't it shameful?”

”Shameful? Shameless. I have always held that even the best woman dearly loves to ruin a man. It's such a triumph. And the more she loves him, the more she'd like to ruin him--that is, if ruin came solely through love for her and didn't involve her.”

”But I would not want to ruin you.”

”If that seemed to be the supreme test of my love for you--are you sure?

I'm not. There's Thomas, knocking to announce dinner.”

The Shenstone incident was apparently closed. Marian, a most attractive woman of thirty, absorbed in a social life that demanded all her physical and mental energy as well as all of her time, did not long vividly remember him. But he had given her a standard by which she unconsciously measured her husband. She contrasted the life he had promised her, the life Shenstone reminded her of, with the life that was--so material, so suspiciously physical when it professed to be loving, so suspiciously chill when it professed to be friendly. She thrust aside these thoughts as disloyal and false. But they persisted in returning.

If she had been less appreciative of Howard's intellect, less fascinated by the charm of his personality, she would soon have become one of the ”misunderstood” women in search of ”consolation.” Instead, she turned her mind in the direction natural to her character--social ambition.

XXIII.

EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING.

In such a city as New York, to be deliberately careful about money is the only way to keep within one's income, whether it be vast or small.

There are temptations to buy at the end of every glance of the eye.

The merchants are crafty in producing new and insidious allurements, in creating new and expensive tastes. But these might be resisted were it not that the habits of all one's a.s.sociates are constantly and all but irresistibly stimulating the faculty of imitation.

Neither Howard nor Marian had been brought up to be watchful about money. Both had been accustomed to having their wants supplied. And now that they had a household and a growing income, it was a matter of course that their expenditures should steadily expand. Before three years had pa.s.sed they were spending more than double the sum which at the outset they had fixed upon as their limit. A merely decent and self-respecting return of the hospitalities they accepted, a carriage and pair and two saddle horses and the servants to look after them--these items accounted for the increase. They looked upon this as really necessary expenditure and soon would have found that curtailment involved genuine deprivation. From the very beginning each step in expansion made the next logical and inevitable, made the plea of necessity seem valid.

An aunt of Marian's died, leaving her a ”small” house--worth perhaps a quarter of a million--near the Avenue in Sixty-fifth Street, and eighty thousand in cash. About the same time Stokely told Howard of a fine speculative opportunity in certain copper properties. Howard hesitated.