Then there came a day when Mrs. Thatcher could stand it no longer. She had a consultation with Mrs. Brereton, and the next morning the latter came over and the two talked further with great animation over the rug in the little drawing-room. After that Mrs. Thatcher dressed herself with unusual care. She put on her new dark blue suit and a hat that her husband always admired, although it was not quite in the fashion. She looked at herself again and again in the glass before she started for the train, giving a touch here and a touch there with nervous fingers. She could not wait for her husband to come home, even if she had been less painfully aware of her new powerlessness in the conventional surroundings. She must venture into new scenes if she would gain what she wanted. And she could not stand this a minute longer—she must end it all now.
Yet, her heart was beating painfully as she neared the city, and she was only somewhat reassured by the glimpse in the ferry-boat mirror of a tall, slender-throated woman with soft, pale cheeks and a curved mouth, her dark eyes gazing indifferently before her under a hat whose cherry wreath drooped against her dark hair, and who turned out to be herself. If she really looked like that——
Her hand lingered on the knob of the ground-glass door that led to the office of her husband’s factory. Then she opened it.
“Nevin!”
Her husband, broad and square-shouldered, was standing over another man’s desk, beyond, talking. There were lines of care on his forehead, and a pencil behind his ear—he was the man of business, not her husband.
He looked up amazed as he saw his wife, but came forward at once.
“Why, Mildred!”
“Oh, Nevin, I hope you don’t mind! I’ve been feeling so dreadfully, I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. I’ve something—something to tell you.”
She began to shake a little, her lip trembled, her eyes looked appealingly at him like a child’s. Her husband had always known as a matter of course that she was beautiful, but her beauty came now like a surprise in the dingy surroundings of the factory office, with the whirr of the planing machines beyond. His eyes met the appeal in hers with a smile that set her pulse beating anew, as he said:
“What is it? Hadn’t you better sit down?”