The car bustled to the curb, stopped while Bret got out. Then the chauffeur shot away with it to the garage. Bret came drowsily up the walk, kissed his wife, gripped the hand of his friend, and sat down.
Jim asked how business was, and they talked shop with zest while Sheila sat in utter solitude, watching the village Lothario play the rôle of honest Horatio.
Her husband had spent the day and half the evening at his business, and yet it interested him more than Sheila did. He showed no impatience to be rid of this man, no eagerness to be alone with his wife who had given up all her own industry to be his companion.
No instinct warned him that his absorption in his business was imperiling his home, nor that his crony was a sneaking conspirator against his happiness.
Sheila was wildly excited, but she pretended to be sleepy and yawningly begged to be excused. It was an hour later before Bret finished talking and she heard him exchange cheery good nights with Jim Greeley. When Bret arrived up-stairs she pretended to be asleep. Before long he was asleep, worn out with honest toil, while she lay battling for the slumber she had not earned. She was sleeping little and ill nowadays, and she rose unrefreshed from unhappy nights to uninteresting days. The effect on her health was growing manifest.
CHAPTER XLVII
The morning after the Jim Greeley adventure Sheila went back to her children and the seaside. She had no energy and everything bored her. The shock of the surf did not thrill her with new energy; it chilled and weakened her. She found Dorothy all aflutter over the attentions of a rich old widower who complimented her brutally.
Dorothy called him her “conquest” and spoke of her “flirtation.” Sheila knew that she used the words rather childishly than with any significance, but her face betrayed a certain dismay.
Dorothy bristled at the shadow of reproof. “Don’t look at me like that! I guess if Jim can butterfly around the way he does I’m not going to insult everybody that’s nice to me.”
Sheila disclaimed any criticism, but the incident alarmed her. And she thought of what Satan provided for idle hands.