II
Clarke fought against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort necessary to the fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. He loved his wife, and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, and in all their relations hitherto there had never been the slightest deviation from mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? He could not have told himself. He went over their life together in his mind. In the five years of their married life, he could not have helped but notice that men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was natural. She was a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected credit upon him, in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock a wife up and deny her the society proper to her years. And her very catholicity of taste, the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of masculine attention, had but served to make his confidence all the more complete. True, he had never thought she loved him as much as he loved her... but now that he came to think of it, was there not a warmer quality to her affection since his return from this last trip west? Was there not a kind of thoughtfulness, was there not a watchful increase in attentiveness, that he had always missed before? Was she not making love to him every day now; just as he had always made love to her before? Were not the parts which they had played for the five years of their married life suddenly reversed? They were! Indeed they were! And what did that mean? What did that portend? Did the brass-bound box have aught to do with that? What was the explanation of this change?
The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rôles into capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began covertly to watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He said nothing more about the box, but within six months after the first day upon which he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his thoughts.
What did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her thoughtfulness in small things, increased.