"Are you crazy!" she would exclaim, in a fierce undertone when
they were upstairs dressing, "Didn't you see that I don't want to
go to-night? I can't understand you sometimes. Bert, you'll fall
in with a plan that I absolutely--"

"Now, look here, Nancy, look here! Weren't you and Mrs. Rose the
two that cooked this whole scheme up last night--"

"She suggested it, and I merely said that I thought SOMETIME it
would be fun--"

"Oh, well, if you plan a thing and then go back on it--"

This led nowhere. In silence the Bradleys would finish their
dressing, in silence descend to the joyous uproar of the cars. But
Nancy despaired of the possibility of ever impressing Bert,
through a dignified silence, with a sense of her displeasure. How
could she possibly be silent under these circumstances? What was
the use, anyway? Bert was tired, irritable, he had not meant to
annoy her. It was just that they both were nervously tense;
presently they would find some way of lessening the strain.

But--she began to wish that he would not drink quite so much. The
other men did, of course, but then they were more used to it than
Bert. Perhaps this constant stimulation accounted for Bert's
nervous irritability, for the indefinable hardening and
estranging. Nancy was not prudish, she had seen wine on her
father's table since she was a baby, she enjoyed it herself, now
and then. But to have cocktails served even at the women's
luncheons; to have every host, whatever the meal, preface it with