"I know. First P'pa, and now you!" Emelene mused happily.
"I wasn't thinking of myself. I was thinking that your father left you a comfortable income!" he said quickly.
"And now you have asked me here; one of the dearest old places in town!" Emelene added innocently.
Genevieve listened in a stupefaction. This was married life, then? Not since her childhood had Genevieve so longed to stamp, to scream, to protest, to tear this twisted scheme apart and start anew!
She was not a crying woman, but she wanted to cry now. She was not—she told herself indignantly—quite a fool. But she felt that if George went on being martyred, and mechanically polite, and grim, she would go into hysterics. She had been married less than six weeks; that night she cried herself to sleep.
Her guests were as agreeable as their natures permitted; but Genevieve was reduced, before the third day of their visit, to a condition of continual tears.
This was her home, this was the place sacred to George and herself, and their love. Nobody in the world,—not his mother, not hers, had their mothers been living!—was welcome here. She had planned to be such a good wife to him, so thoughtful, so helpful, so brave when he must be away. But she could not rise to the height of sharing him with other women, and saying whatever she said to him in the hearing of witnesses. And then she dared not complain too openly! That was an additional hardship, for if George insulted his guests, then that horrid Penny—
Genevieve had always liked Penny, and had danced and flirted with him aeons ago. She had actually told Betty that she hoped Betty would marry Penny. But now she felt that she loathed him. He was secretly laughing at George, at George who had dared to take a stand for old-fashioned virtue and the purity of the home!
It was all so unexpected, so hard. Women everywhere were talking about George's article, and expected her to defend it! George, she could have defended. But how could she talk about a subject upon which she was not informed, in which, indeed, as she was rather fond of saying, she was absolutely uninterested?
George was changed, too. Something was worrying him; and it was hard on the darling old boy to come home to Miss Emelene and the cat and Eleanor and Alys, every night! Emelene adored him, of course, and Alys was always interesting and vivacious, but—but it wasn't like coming home to his own little Genevieve!