"You never fail when I need you," she said, as Shelby couched his jaded body in the cosy library before an open fire. "Joe is always out, of course. I don't mind that—now. Milicent too is gone to-night,—a children's party. I've been lonely—depressed. Since you came—ah, well, see for yourself what I am."
A maudlin self-pity, born of alcohol, dimmed Shelby's eyes.
"It's like a home to me," he confessed, his voice uncertain. "It's like a home."
"And some call you hard!" Mrs. Hilliard extended both plump hands to him. "How they misjudge you."
"Everybody misjudges me, Cora," Shelby declared, not backward in manual demonstration himself; "everybody but you."
The lady released herself adroitly, and fluttered the music at a piano just beyond the half-drawn portière of the adjoining room.
"Shall I play?" she asked.
Shelby nodded like a sultan from his cushions.
"Ragtime," he directed. "Something with a tune." The other woman had surfeited him with classicalities.
He built air castles as he watched and listened; fabrics furnished after the manner of the Hilliard home and peopled by two kindred souls. If this insidious luxury were his—the warmth, ease, leisure, Cora! He considered the turn of her neck, her profile, the famous shoulders, now clothed yet not concealed. She was handsome still; ripe, but not over-ripe, ambitious, capable. They were singularly congenial, he and she. He could have blundered worse than in marrying her, had not burly Joe forestalled. He—inappreciative hulk!—was no fit mate for her. She needed sympathy, coöperation, the fellowship of her mind's true complement: in fine, himself. If the other woman should not—if Joe—! He clipped the revery of its conclusion.