"Quite seriously, Arthur," she said a day or two later, after perusal of some travel prospectuses with fascinating illustrations of Trains de Luxe, "I not only wish, but intend, to go to the Riviera this winter."
"And leave me?" he asked in blank astonishment.
"Why not? I scarcely ever see you now. You are at the office two nights a week regularly, and when you do dine at home, the moment you leave the table you rush off to the typewriter, or dictate to a secretary in your study till the middle of the night. What can you want with me?"
He muttered something about fireside comfort and repose; then he laughed and told her not to be ridiculous. She retorted hotly; he spoke angrily in return; and another silence ensued, the breach widening and widening after every such silence until their mutual mental atmosphere was so charged with electricity that thunder and lightning might break out at any moment.
"He is tired of me," she thought. He remembered that nervous prostration sometimes resulted in estrangement and family dissensions. Neither of them put it down to hats.
About this time he became preoccupied, absent, gloomy in manner; he spoke little, often answering at random when spoken to. His evenings at home were fewer and fewer; sometimes, when he paused in the act of putting on his coat before going out, and looked blankly at her, she fancied that he was trying to bring himself to make some painful disclosure beyond his courage. Her imagination, stimulated by the sight of letters—the handwriting was a woman's, she was sure—that increased his preoccupation, and were always hustled out of her sight, suggested causes she would rather not think of for his evident weariness of her society.
Yet there were moments when she longed to ask him to tell her all, to let her know the worst that was weighing on him; but courage always halted till opportunity fled.
So that one Sunday afternoon, when she was looking through the illustrations in the last Traveller's Journal, thinking him absorbed in Spectators and Outlooks, she was startled to hear him suddenly begin: "If you are still hankering after this trip to the South, for which you are manifestly quite unfit—I think you ought to know this——"
He broke off; she looked up. "Well?" she asked, impatient of a prolonged pause.
"That it is at present absolutely impossible——" He seemed about to add something, then broke off again.