“It has not been easy for me to tell all things to Frank. Don’t misunderstand me; he has been a model husband, according to my standards.”
“According to your standards?”
“According to my standards—when I married him. If standards were permanent I suppose happy matings would be less unusual. A young couple must have something in common in order to respond at all to each other’s attractions, but as they grow older they set up different standards, and they drift apart.”
She paused, and Grant sat in silence, watching the glow of the firelight upon her cheek.
“Why don’t you smoke?” she exclaimed, suddenly springing up. “Let me find you some of Frank’s cigars.”
Grant protested that he smoked too much. She produced a box of cigars and extended them to him. Then she held a match while he got his light.
“Your standards have changed?” said Grant, taking up the thread when she had sat down again.
“They have. They have changed more than Frank’s, which makes me feel rather at fault in the matter. How could he know that I would change my ideal of what a husband should be?”
“Why shouldn’t he know? That is the course of development. Without changing ideals there would be stagnation.”
“Perhaps,” she returned, and he thought he caught a note of weariness in her voice. “But I don’t blame Frank—now. I rather blame him then. He swept me off my feet; stampeded me. My parents helped him, and I was only half disposed to resist. You see, I had this other matter on my mind, and for the first time in my life I felt the need of protection. Besides, I took a matter-of-fact view of marriage. I thought that sentiment—love, if you like—was a thing of books, an invention of poets and fiction writers. Practical people would be practical in their marriages, as in their other undertakings. To marry Frank seemed a very practical course. My father assured me that Frank had in him qualities of large success. He would make money; he would be a prominent man in circles of those who do things. These predictions he has fulfilled. Frank has been all I expected—then.”