"I say 'apparently happy,' dear, for that was all it was. Ralph did what he could for me in his own way, so at first it was perhaps my fault that we were not more congenial; but his ways were not my ways, and I kept looking for what was not there. He was well-born, but his life on the ranch for so many years had dulled his appreciation of those finer, innate qualities which every wife craves—he had forgotten how to be the gentleman. Don't think that I expected the impossible, or anything incongruous to the life we were leading; but there are little attentions, thoughtful considerations and other things in a husband's relation to his wife, trivial perhaps in themselves, which the wife expects and misses if she does not receive—the more so, if she has deluded herself into believing that the instincts for them are inborn, and only require her suggestion to develop and bring them to fruition. These qualities he had seemed to show before we were married, but they proved to be only a veneer which soon wore off."
"Why do you bring this all back now ?" Alice asked, sympathetically, seeing the lines deepen in Eleanor's face.
"I must tell it to you, dear—we have grown so close that I feel this is all that remains between us. When you know this, we shall be sisters indeed."
"We are that already and more," Alice urged. "Only think how near of an age we really are."
"In years, yes; but sometimes I feel as if I had already lived centuries."
"Will the telling of this take a few of those centuries from you?" the girl inquired, smiling.
"I hope so; and that is one reason why I am asking you to share the burden with me. All that I have told you so far has been unimportant compared with what followed. Had it simply been a difference in temperament, I have no doubt that I should have become accustomed to the absence of these things I craved, and have adjusted my life to meet the new conditions. But other and more serious difficulties soon arose. With Ralph Buckner possession seemed to be enough. I have seen him scheme for months to secure some high-bred horse or a fancy breed of cattle, and after they became his property hardly care whether he ever saw them again. So it was with his wife. Within six months he resumed his fortnightly visits to Colorado Springs on alleged business, from which he always returned worn out and ill-tempered. Until we were married, I had no idea that his life on the ranch and his life in Colorado Springs were so distinctly apart, but I was soon to learn it with bitter clearness."
As the story progressed Alice could feel the increasing tenseness. Eleanor had herself well in hand, but the occasional break in her voice evidenced the strain.
"There was a so-called club in Colorado Springs whose members included the wildest young men of the town and several of the younger ranchmen who were able to stand the pace. In this Ralph was a leading spirit, drinking and gambling with that abandon which was his dominant characteristic. 'Buckner is a poor gambler but a good loser,' one of them is reported to have said, but that only meant that Ralph succeeded in concealing his real feelings until he reached home; for it was his wife who received the full force of the reaction as his brain cleared from the fumes of the liquor and he came to a realization of his losses."
She paused and looked at her companion, and encouraged by Alice's rapt attention continued: