“Shall you come over soon?” she whispered, with her head on one side in the fashion which seems to be peculiar to American women when begging their lords not to stay out late. Ordham looked at her in surprise and a faint sense of displeasure, but he said kindly:
“I am afraid not. The men sit up late—those that have not been out, you know. I cannot well leave them.”
“You leave them when you are tired of them in the field, fast enough.” Mabel looked pretty, even when she pouted, but her husband replied calmly:
“You should get to sleep as early as possible. I’ll look in later and see if you are awake, but better put the light out and drop off.”
“I can sleep in the morning, and I hardly see anything of you now that we have such a lot of company.”
“I thought you wanted house parties.”
“I did—I do. But I did not realize that they would separate us so much.”
It was on the tip of Ordham’s tongue to remark that he did not fancy any man saw more of his wife, but bethought himself in time that this might sound ungallant. Nevertheless, he was tired of reiterating his adoration when he wanted to go to sleep or to talk with people whose minds were engaged with less personal matters, and he had, perhaps unconsciously, drifted into the habit of seeking his couch as late as possible. He often assured himself that he loved Mabel as much as ever (of course), but love was entitled to vacations, and a man should feel that his soul was his own, not his wife’s. Mabel had been well coached, and her woman’s instincts were sharp, her brain calculating, but she loved with as much passion as her nature was capable of generating, and no woman in love avoids mistakes. Love made her insistent, demand constant verbal demonstration, until Ordham sometimes felt that if called upon once more to reiterate “I love you,” he should give full rein to the sulks which so often arose in him. But Mabel reasoned that he was hers, he had received proof that she had married him for love alone, why should not he seek her every moment when he was off duty as host, instead of compelling her to resort to wiles, coaxings, tears? She was still astonished at the discovery that the ceremony of marriage had not put an end to all effort. Where was the happy ever after?
She drooped a little at his last words, and the change from her grand air was so sudden that he said contritely, although an angry flush rose to his face, “You know that it is my duty to take all possible care of you, but I’ll break loose from the smoking room as soon as I decently can, and wander over.”
This promise he forgot before she was out of sight. Leaving the men to take care of themselves, he sought a little room off the library which his father had used as a den and he had appropriated to himself. He locked the door behind him, and opening his desk, took out a letter he had received that morning from Margarethe Styr but had not yet found time to read.