“Why! has she done anything wrong?”
“No! but she annoys me, she’s too good-looking.”
Floyd feared his wife’s mind was unbalanced; she brooded too much over her misfortune. He was very tender, very indulgent, but sometimes his patience gave out.
Days, weeks, months passed. Winter came with snow, ice, sleet. Julie spent most of the time in her room, rarely going down to dinner. Floyd tried to get her out for a walk, but had to compromise with the automobile. She’d wear a hat pulled down over her eyes, a thick veil, a long close-fitting coat, and avoided Fifth Avenue. The house remained covered. Floyd begged her to take off those ugly, depressing gray things, but she sat silent, antagonistic; it always ended in his dashing out, and spending the day at the club. But his anger never lasted. The pathetic figure, crouching in a big chair, those weary lustreless eyes, hurt him terribly; she had lost her beauty. What is the elusive thing we call beauty? It is not form, it is not color; it is something that pervades, like the perfume of a flower in fresh earth, or a haunting magic in the woods. In a woman it is a living spark that sets us aglow; that spark was dead in Julie; he had to admit it. The Image which he called by her name was blurred; she would be an old, miserable woman; he, an old, disappointed man.
He spent much of his time at the club. He’d read his morning paper there. He detested local politics. The society column annoyed him; Mrs. C. had run off with her chauffeur, Mrs. M. was going to marry her riding master, a well-known woman was suing her millionaire husband for more alimony. It was horrible to have one’s domestic horrors made attractive reading; he resolved no one should suspect his. Then the paper would drop from his hand, the green Park grow shadowy, fade away; he’d awaken with a sense of guilt; a young man dozing in his chair, and all the unrest in the world. He would look about furtively; the others didn’t notice—they too were dozing.
One day he went home earlier than usual. Julie, with the boy in her arms, was sitting at the window watching the workingmen on the iron frame of a building opposite; they were knocking, boring, climbing in and out like monkeys; it was fascinating. She was conscious of her flannel wrapper. Floyd was always well dressed, well groomed; his glance was like a sharp whip. He took the boy from her and put him on the bed.
“The child is heavy, you must not accustom him to be carried about; he makes the house unbearable with his cries. It’s all right to be a good mother, but you are overdoing it; you forget you have a husband.”
She was on her feet facing him indignantly.
“How can you speak to me like that? You have no pity for my misfortune!”
“I’m sorry if I have offended you, but I don’t see why you should be so sensitive about your hair. You have become very neglectful; you have lost all self-respect. I’m ashamed of the servants.”