CHAPTER IX

INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE

"HOWARD," said Honora that evening, "I've been going through houses to-day."

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"Houses!" he exclaimed, looking up from his newspaper. "And I've been most fortunate," she continued. found one that Mrs. Farnham built-she is now Mrs. Rindge. It is just finished, and so attractive. If I'd looked until doomsday I couldn't have done any better." "But great Scott I" he ejaculated, "what put the notion of a town house into your head?"

"Isn't it high time to be thinking of the winter?" she asked. "It's nearly the end of September."

He was inarticulate for a few moments, in an evident desperate attempt to rally his forces to meet such an unforeseen attack.

"Who said anything about going to town?" he inquired. "Now, Howard, don't be foolish," she replied. "Surely you didn't expect to stay in Quicksands all winter?" "Foolish!" he repeated, and added inconsequently, 'why not?"

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"Because," said Honora, calmly, "I have a life to lead as well as you."

"But you weren't satisfied until you got to Quicksands, and now you want to leave it.”

"I didn't bargain to stay here in the winter," she declared. "You know very well that if you were unfortunate it would be different. But you're quite prosperous." "How do you know?" he demanded unguardedly.

"Quicksands tells me," she said. "It is a little humiliating not to have more of your confidence, and to hear such things from outsiders.'

"You never seemed interested in business matters," he answered uneasily.

"I should be," said Honora, "if you would only take the trouble to tell me about them." She stood up. "Howard, can't you see that it is making us-grow apart? If you won't tell me about yourself and what you're doing, you drive me to other interests. I am your wife, and I ought to know-I want to know. The reason I don't understand is because you've never taken the trouble to teach me. I wish to lead my own life, it is

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true to develop. I don't want to be like these other women down here. I-I was made for something better. I'm sure of it. But I wish my life to be joined to yours, too - and it doesn't seem to be. And sometimes - I'm afraid I can't explain it to you-sometimes I feel lonely and frightened, as though I might do something desperate. And I don't know what's going to become of

me.

He laid down his newspaper and stared at her helplessly, with the air of a man who suddenly finds himself at sea in a small boat without oars.

"Oh, you can't understand!" she cried. have known you never could."

"I might

He was, indeed, thoroughly perplexed and uncomfortable unhappy might not be too strong a word. He got up awkwardly and put his hand on her arm. She did not respond. He drew her, limp and unresisting, down on the lounge beside him.'

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"For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Honora?" he faltered. "I-I thought we were happy. You were getting on all right, and seemed to be having a good time down here. You never said anything about this."

She turned her head and looked at him a long, searching look with widened eyes.

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No," she said slowly, "you don't understand. I suppose it isn't your fault."

upset like

"I'll try," he said, "I don't like to see youthis. I'll do anything I can to make you happy. "Not things, not-not toys," Trixton Brent's expres

sion involuntarily coming to her lips. "Oh, can't you see I'm not that kind of a woman? I don't want to be bought. I want you, whatever you are, if you are. I want to be saved. Take care of me -see a little more of me-be a little interested in what I think. God gave

me a mind, and other men have discovered it. You don't know, you can't know, what temptations you subject me to. It isn't right, Howard. And oh, it is humiliating not to be able to interest one's husband." "But you do interest me," he protested.

She shook her head.

"Not so much as your business," she said; "notnearly so much."

"Perhaps I have been too absorbed," he confessed. "One thing has followed another. I didn't suspect that you felt this way. Come, I'll try to brace up." He pressed her to him. "Don't feel badly. You're overwrought. You've exaggerated the situation, Honora. We'll go in on the eight o'clock train together and look at the house—although I'm afraid it's a little steep," he added cautiously.

"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora. "I don't want it."

"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning. We'll go and look at it, anyway."

Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is one day struck by a falling brick. Howard had not thought of consulting her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands. And, although he might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered a more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions. Business demands peace at any price. And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in so different a manner, recurred to him.

The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a disintegrator of the night's fantasies. It awoke Honora at what for her was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her husband whistling in his room. It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame. Unimagined numbers of America's women possess that quality a fact that is becoming more and more apparent every day. "Why, Honora!" Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table. "What's happened to you?"

"Have you forgotten already," she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her coffee, "that we are going to town together?"

He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.

"How much do you think Mrs. Farnham-or Mrs. Rindge is worth?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.

"Old Marshall left her five million dollars."

"What has that to do with it?" inquired Honora. "She isn't going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing."

"Wouldn't it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house. You know you proposed it yourself, and it won't take very much of your time."

He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.

"Howard," she said, "I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt. We haven't been at Silverdale all summer. Here's a note from her saying she'll be in town to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her at her hotel. I think I'll go to Silverdale a little later."

"Why don't you?" he said. "It would do you good." "And you?" she asked.

"My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora. You know that. And I wouldn't spend another day at Silver

dale if they gave me a deed to the property," he declared.

On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton Brent.

"Whither away?" he cried in apparent astonishment. "Up at dawn, and the eight o'clock train!

"We were going to look at a house," explained Honora, "and Howard has no other time."

"I'll go, too," declared Mr. Brent, promptly. "You mightn't think me a judge of houses, but I am. I've lived in so many bad ones that I know a good one when I see it now."

"Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I'm going to take the Farnham house," said Howard, smiling. There, on the deck of the ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him amusement. With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.

"Well, perhaps you are," said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink. "I shouldn't like to take the other end of the bet. Why shouldn't you? You're fat and healthy and making money faster than you can gather it in."

Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably. Trixton Brent was not a man to offend.

"Honora has got that delusion, too," he replied. He steeled himself in his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife's side lent a different aspect to the situation.

Honora, during this colloquy, was silent. She was a little uncomfortable, and pretended not to see Mr. Brent's wink.

"Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this morning," he observed; "we might have gone in that. It landed three days ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver shots."

"Oh, I do wish you had it," said Honora, relieved by the change of subject. "To drive in one must be such a wonderful sensation."