“You ought to know, Peter, that the spirit of jest is not a component part of the female make-up.”
He arose from the divan, put on his coat and hat and went painfully out of the door.
Peter left alone shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette, and with a sigh he fell back into the corner of the divan and looked pensively into the fire.
V
Several days went by before Clarinda recovered from the shock she had sustained during the conversation with her father and with Peter.
Clarinda made it a point never to disagree with Peter. She wanted to submerge herself in his moods and thoughts, to absorb his point of view. It was true that she often found Peter bombastic and egotistical and even foolish, but that did not alter her determination. Her observation of combative women, and to what end they came, was sure, and it meant always mental separation, so she determined to avoid this condition at whatever cost it might be to her own individuality. As he should go, so would she go.
When she had thought the matter over, she saw that she had been small, and decided that when they went to inspect the house she would assent to anything he would suggest.
Clarinda knew the house, and had often envied the people who had lived in it. It stood upon one of the most fashionable streets of the city. Surrounded by large gardens it stood alone on the top of a hill, with a wall running around its borders that kept away the gaze of the public.
It had been built but a few years, by a man who had made progress in his undertakings. He built it after plans he had long thought of, and in it he had placed his hopes. Within its four walls he wanted to pass a wonderful life and a long existence.
The forces that control, however, took no interest in his plans, and he and his family moved in, and in only a short time he was smitten with an illness and all that he had hoped for was buried in a few feet of earth.