The wife’s airiness was damped instantly. Parker Steel had repelled her with the semi-playful air of a man not wishing to be bothered. She had noticed this suggestion of aloofness much in him of late, and had ascribed it to irritability, the result of overwork.
“Anything the matter, dear?”
“Matter?”
He looked at her frankly, with arched brows and open eyes.
“Yes, you seem tired—”
“There is some excuse for me. This is the first ten minutes I have had to myself—all day. It is an effort to talk when one’s tongue has been going for hours.”
His wife’s face appeared a little triste and peevish. She glanced at herself in the mirror over the mantel-piece, and found herself wondering why life seemed composed of actions and reactions.
“Have you had tea?”
“No, I waited,” and he turned and rang the bell with a feeling of relief. It was trying to his watchfulness for Parker Steel to be left alone with his own wife. Even the white cap of the parlor-maid was welcome to him, or the flimsiest barrier that could aid him in his ordeal of silent self-isolation. The art of hypocrisy grows more complex with each new statement of relationships. And hypocrisy in the home is the reguilding of a substance that tarnishes with every day. The wear and tear of life erase the lying surface, and the daily daubing becomes a habit by necessity, even as a single dying of the hair pledges the vain mortal to perpetual self-decoration.