XV

"Lois, would you mind very much if we didn't move into the new house,

after all?"

"Not move into the new house! What do you mean? I thought it would be

finished next week."

"It means that I shall not be able to increase my living expenses this

year," said Justin.

Husband and wife were sitting on the piazza, in the shade of the

purple wistaria-vines, on a warm Sunday afternoon, a month after

Dosia's return. From within, the voices of the children sounded

peacefully over their early supper.

The afternoon, so far, had savored only of domestic monotony, with no

foreshadowing of events to come. Dosia was out walking with George

Sutton, and the people who might "drop in," as they often did on

Sundays, had other engagements to-day. Lois, gowned in lavender

muslin, had been sitting on the piazza for an hour, trying to read

while waiting for Justin to join her. She had counted each minute, but

now that he was there, she put down her book with a show of reluctance

as she said:

"Why didn't you tell me before? I gave the order for the window-shades

yesterday when I was in town--that was what I wanted to talk to you

about this afternoon. You have to leave your order at least two weeks

beforehand at this season of the year."

"You can countermand it, can't you?"

"I suppose I'll have to--if we're not to move into the house," said

Lois in a high-keyed voice, with those tiresome tears coming, as

usual, to her eyes. She felt inexpressibly hurt, disappointed, fooled.

"I thought you said you were having so many orders lately. Does the

money _all_ have to 'go back into the business,'" she quoted

sardonically, "as usual? I think there might be some left for your own

family sometimes. I'm tired of always going without for the business."

It was a complaint she had made many times before, but in each fresh

pang of her resentment she felt as if she were saying it for the first

time.

"We have orders, I'm glad to say, but we've had one big setback

lately," he answered.

He knew, with a twinge, that she had some reason on her side. The very

effort for success was meat and drink to him; he cared not what else

he went without, so the business grew. But she _might_ have had a

little more out of it as they went along, instead of waiting for the

grand climax of undoubted prosperity. A little means so much to a wife

sometimes, because it means the recognition of her right.

"I've been in a lot of trouble lately, Lois, though I haven't talked

about it," he continued, with an unusual appeal in his voice. The

blasting fact of those returned machines had been all he could cope

with; he had been tongue-tied when it came to speaking about it--the

whirl and counter-whirl in his brain demanded concentration, not

diffusion and easy words to interpret. But now that he had begun to

see his way clear again, he had a sudden deep craving for the

unreasoning sympathy of love.

"I waited until the last possible moment to tell you, in hopes that I

shouldn't have to, Lois. Anyway, Saunders is going to put up a couple

of houses for next year that you'll like much better, he says."

"Oh, it will be just the same next year; there'll always be

something," said Lois indifferently, getting up and going into the

house.

He was bitterly hurt, and far too proud to show it. He could have

counted on quickest sympathy from her once; he knew in his heart that

he could call it out even now if he chose, but he did not choose. If

his own wife could be like that, she might be.

"Papa dear, I love you so much!"

He looked down to see his little fair-haired girl, white-ruffled and

blue-ribboned, standing beside him a-tiptoe in her little white shoes,

her arms reached up to tighten instantly around his neck as he bent

over.

"Zaidee, my little Zaidee," he said, and, lifting her on his knee,

strained her tightly to him with a rush of such passionate affection

that it almost unmanned him for the moment. She lay against his heart

perfectly still. After a few moments she put her small hand to his

lips, and he kissed it, and she smiled up at him, warm and secure--his

little darling girl, his little princess. Yet, even in that joy of his

child, he felt a new heart-hunger which no child love, beautiful as it

was, could ever satisfy, any more than it could satisfy the

heart-hunger of his wife.

She had begun, since the ball, to go around again as usual, and the

house looked as if it had a mistress in it once more, though the

atmosphere of a home was lacking. She was languid, irritable, and

unsmiling, accepting his occasional caresses as if they made little

difference to her, though sometimes she showed a sort of fierce,

passionate remorse and longing. Either mood was unpleasing to him: it

contained tacit reproach for his separateness. Then, there were still

occasionally evenings when he came home to find her windows darkened

and everything in the household upset and forlorn; when every footfall

must be adjusted to her ear--that ear that had strained and ached for

his coming. Her whole day culminated in that poor, meager half-hour in

which he sat by her, and in which her personality hardly reached him

until he kissed her, on leaving, with a quick, remorseful affection at

being so glad to go.

The typometer disaster had proved as bad as, and worse than, he had

feared, but he was working retrieval with splendid effort, calling all

his personal magnetism into play where it was possible. He had

borrowed a large sum from Lanston's,--a young private banking firm,

glad at the moment to lend at a fairly large interest for a term of

months,--holding on to the dissatisfied customers and creating new

demand for the machine, so that the sales forged ahead of Cater's,

with whom there was still a good-natured we-rise-together sort of

rivalry, though it seemed at times as if it might take a sharper edge.

Leverich's dictum regarding Cater embodied an extension of the policy

to be pursued with minor, outlying competitors: "You'll have to force

that fellow out of business or get him to come into the combine."

Leverich again smiled on Justin. Immediate success was the price

demanded for the continuance of a backing. There was just a little of

the high-handed quality in his manner which says, "No more nonsense,

if you please." That morning after the ball had shown Justin the fangs

that were ready, if he showed symptoms of "falling down," to shake him

ratlike by the neck and cast him out.

"Papa dear, papa dear! There's a man coming up the walk, my papa

dear."

"Why, so there is," said Justin, rising and setting the child down

gently as he went forward with outstretched hand, while Lois

simultaneously appeared once more on the piazza. "Why, how are you,

Larue? I'm mighty glad to see you back again. When did you get home?"

"The steamer got in day before yesterday," said the newcomer, shaking

hands heartily with host and hostess. He was a man with a dark,

pointed beard and mustache, deep-set eyes, and an unusually pleasant

deep voice that seemed to imply a grave kindliness. His glance

lingered over Lois. "How are you, Mrs. Alexander? Better, I hope?

Which chair shall I push out of the sun for you--this one?"

"Yes, thank you," responded Lois, sinking into it, with her billows of

lilac muslin and her rich brown hair against the background of green

vines. "Aren't you going to sit down yourself?"

"Thank you, I've only a minute," said the visitor, leaning against one

of the piazza-posts, his wide hat in his hand. "I'm out at my place at

Collingwood for the summer, and the trains don't connect very well on

Sunday. I had to run down here to see some people, but I thought I

wouldn't pass you by."

"Did you have a pleasant trip?" asked Lois.

"Very pleasant," rejoined Mr. Larue, without enthusiasm. "Oh, by the

way, Alexander, I heard that you were inquiring for me at the office

last week. Anything I can do for you?"

"Have you any money lying around just now that you don't know what to

do with?" asked Justin significantly.

Mr. Larue's dark, deep-set eyes took on the guarded change which the

mention of money brings into social relations.

"Perhaps," he admitted.

"May I come around to-morrow at three o'clock and talk to you?"

"Yes, do," said the other, preparing to move on. "Please don't get up,

Mrs. Alexander; you don't look as well as I'd like to see you."

"Oh, I'm all right," said Lois.

"You must try and get strong this summer," said Mr. Larue, his eyes

dwelling on her with an intimate, penetrating thoughtfulness before he

turned away and went, Justin accompanying him down the walk, Zaidee

dancing on behind. Lois looked after them. At the gate, Mr. Larue

turned once more and lifted his hat to her.

A faint, lovely color had come into Lois' cheek, brought there by the

powerful tonic which she always felt in Eugene Larue's presence. She

felt cheered, invigorated, comforted, by a man with whom she had

hardly talked alone for an hour altogether in their whole five years'

acquaintance. He had a way of taking thought for her on the slightest

occasion, as he had to-day: he knew when she entered a room or left

it, and she knew that he knew.

It was one of those peculiar, unspoken sympathetic intimacies which

exist between certain men and women, without the conscious volition of

either. His glance or the tone of his voice was a response to her

mood; he saw instinctively when she was too warm or too cold, or

needed a rest. Her husband, who loved her, had no such intuitions; he

had to be told clumsily, and even then might not understand. Yet she

had not loved him the less because she must beat down such little

barriers herself; perhaps she had loved him the more for it--he was

the man to whom she belonged heart and soul: but the barriers were a

fact. She had an absolute conviction that she could do nothing that

Eugene Larue would misunderstand, any more than she misunderstood her

involuntary attraction for him. Above all things, he reverenced her as

his ideal of what a wife and mother should be. He would have given all

he possessed to have the kind of love which Justin took as a matter of

course.

Eugene Larue had been married himself for ten years, for more than

half of which time his wife, whom Lois had never seen, had lived

abroad for the further study of music, an art to which she was

passionately devoted. If there had been any effort to bring a hint of

scandal into the semi-separation, it had been instantly frowned away;

there was nothing for it to feed on. Mrs. Larue lived in Dresden,

under the undoubted chaperonage of an elderly aunt and in the constant

publicity of large musical entertainments and gatherings. She

sometimes played the accompaniments of great singers. Her husband went

over every spring, presumably to be with her, living alone for the

greater part of the year at his large place at Collingwood. Neither

was ever known to speak of the other without the greatest respect,

and questions as to when either had been "heard from" were usual and

in order; it was always tacitly taken for granted that Mrs. Larue's

expatriation was but temporary.

But Lois knew, without needing to be told, that he was a man who had

suffered, and still suffered at times profoundly, from having all the

tenderness of his nature thrown back upon itself, without reference to

that sting of the known comment of other men: "It must be pretty tough

to have your wife go back on you like that." In some mysterious way,

his wife had not needed the richness of the affection that he lavished

on her. If her heart had been warmed by it a little when she married

him, it had soon cooled off; she was glad to get away, and he had

proudly let her go.

Lois smiled up at Justin with sudden coquetry as he mounted the porch

steps, but he only looked at her absently as he said:

"There seems to be a shower coming up. Dosia's hurrying down the road.

I think I'd better take the chairs in now."