three minor variants on the same theme since. She had seen Rodney drop
off now and again into a scowling abstraction, during which it was so
evident he didn't want to talk to her, or even be reminded that she was
about, that she had gone away flushed and wondering, and needing an
effort to hold back the tears.

These weren't frequent occurrences, though. Once settled into what
apparently was going to be their winter's routine, they had so little
time alone together that these moments, when they came, had almost the
tension of those that unmarried lovers enjoy. They were something to
look forward to and make the delicious utmost of.

So, until she got to wondering about Bertie, Rose's instinctive attitude
toward the group of young to middle-aged married people into which her
own marriage had introduced her, was founded on the assumption that,
allowing for occasional exceptions, the husbands and wives felt toward
each other as she and Rodney did--were held together by the same
irresistible, unanalyzable attraction, could remember severally, their
vivid intoxicating hours, just as she remembered the hour when Rodney
had told her the story and the philosophy of his life.

Bertie, or rather the demand for what Bertie supplied, together with
Frederica's explanation of it, brought her the misgiving that marriage
was not, perhaps, even between people who loved each other,--between
husbands who were not "unfaithful" and wives who were not
"mercenary"--quite so simple as it seemed.

The misgiving was not very serious at first--half amused, and wholly
academic, because she hadn't, as yet, the remotest notion that the thing
concerned, or ever could concern, herself; but the point was, it formed