She dared not look at her husband—­Husband!  In that moment of cruel memory, of ghastly chopfallen vanity, it was all she could do not visibly to shrink from him.  She forgot that he was her best friend, her friend from babyhood almost, Theodore Hargrave.  She felt only that he was her husband, her jailer, the representative of all that divided her forever from the life of luxury and show which had so permeated her young blood with its sweet, lingering poison.  She descended from the carriage, passed the crowd of gaping, grinning loungers, and entered the train, with cheeks burning and eyes downcast, an ideal bride in appearance of shy and refined modesty.  And none who saw her delicate, aristocratic beauty of face and figure and dress could have attributed to her the angry, ugly, snobbish thoughts, like a black core hidden deep in the heart of a bewitching flower.

As he sat opposite her in the compartment, she was exaggerating into glaring faults the many little signs of indifference to fashion in his dress.  She had never especially noted before, but now she was noting as a shuddering exhibition of “commonness,” that he wore detachable cuffs—­and upon this detail her distraught mind fixed as typical.  She could not take her eyes off his wrists; every time he moved his arms so that she could see the wristband within his cuff, she felt as if a piece of sandpaper were scraping her skin.  He laid his hand on her two gloved hands, folded loosely in her lap.  Every muscle, every nerve of her body grew tense; she only just fought down the impulse to snatch her hands away and shriek at him.

She sat rigid, her teeth set, her eyes closed, until her real self got some control over the monstrous, crazy creature raving within her.  Then she said:  “Please don’t—­touch me—­just now.  I’ve been on such a strain—­and I’m almost breaking down.”

He drew his hand away.  “I ought to have understood,” he said.  “Would you like to be left alone for a while?”

Without waiting for her answer, he left the compartment to her.  She locked the door and let herself loose.  When she had had her cry “out,” she felt calm; but oh, so utterly depressed.  “This is only a mood,” she said to herself.  “I don’t really feel that way toward him.  Still—­I’ve made a miserable mistake.  I ought not to have married him.  I must hide it.  I mustn’t make him suffer for what’s altogether my own fault.  I must make the best of it.”

When he came back, she proceeded to put her programme into action.  All the afternoon he strove with her sweet gentleness and exaggerated consideration for him; he tried to make her see that there was no necessity for this elaborate pose and pretense.  But she was too absorbed in her part to heed him.  In the evening, soon after they returned to the compartment from the dining car, he rose.  “I am going out to smoke,” he said.  “I’ll tell the porter to make up your berth.  You must be very tired.  I have taken another—­out in the car—­so that you will not be disturbed.”