"Well?"
"You said it was a sort of relief to find me on the spot. Did you say it because I am not always here when you want me? Do you think I go out too much? Does it ever seem to you that I neglect you a little, and am not quite as domesticated as I should be? Should you be—happier—if I lived a quieter life and cared less for society?"
There was a touch of unusual earnestness in her voice, and her eyes were almost childishly eager as she turned them upon him.
"Happier!" he exclaimed, gayly. "My dear child! I could not easily be happier than I am. How could I accuse you of neglecting me? You satisfy me exactly in everything. Whose home is more charming, and whose children are better cared for than mine? It is not necessary for you to cook my dinner, but you are the most delightful sauce to it in the world when you sit at the head of the table. What more could a man want?"
"I—I don't know," she said, slowly, "but I could not bear to think that I was not what I should be in my own home. It has always seemed to me that there could be no bad taste and bad breeding so inexcusable as the bad taste and bad breeding of a woman who is disagreeable and negligent in her own house. One has no need to put it on moral grounds even—the bad taste of it is enough. I don't think I could ever be disagreeable, or that you could think me so; but it struck me"—
"Don't let it strike you again," he interrupted, amiably. "It has struck me that there were never two people so well suited to each other as our married life has proved us to be. I don't mind admitting now that once or twice during the first year I thought that you were a little restless or unhappy, but it was when you were not well, and it was quite natural, and it all passed away, and I don't think it would occur to any one in these days to ask whether you are happy or not."
Bertha was playing with his watch-chain, and she separated one charm upon it from another carefully as she answered him in a soft, natural voice:
"There is a legend, you know," she said, "that the first year of one's marriage is always uncomfortable."
"Oh, mine was not uncomfortable," he returned,—"it was delightful, as all the other years have been; but—just occasionally, you know—there was a—well, a vague something—which never troubles me now."
"I must have behaved badly in some way," said Bertha, smiling, "or it would not have troubled you then."