She turned the book so that he could see the title.  His eyes wandered from it to linger on her slender white fingers—­on the one where a plain band of gold shone eloquently.  It fascinated and angered him; and she saw it, and was delighted.  Her voice had a note of triumph in it as she said, putting the book on the table beside her, “Foolish, isn’t it, to be reading how to build beautiful houses”—­she was going to say, “when one will probably never build any house at all.”  She bethought her that this might sound like a sigh over Dory’s poverty and over the might-have-been.  So she ended, “when the weather is so deliciously lazy.”

“I know the chap who wrote it,” said Ross, “Clever—­really unusual talent.  But the fashionable women took him up, made him a toady and a snob, like the rest of the men of their set.  How that sort of thing eats out manhood and womanhood!”

Just what Dory often said!  “My husband says,” she answered, “that whenever the world has got a fair start toward becoming civilized, along have come wealth and luxury to smother and kill.  It’s very interesting to read history from that standpoint, instead of taking the usual view—­that luxury produces the arts and graces.”

“Dory is a remarkable man,” said Ross with enthusiasm.  “He’s amazingly modest; but there are some men so big that they can’t hide, no matter how hard they try.  He’s one of them.”

Adelaide was in a glow, so happy did this sincere and just tribute make her, so relieved did she feel.  She was talking to one of Dory’s friends and admirers, not with an old sweetheart of hers about whom her heart, perhaps, might be—­well, a little sore, and from whom radiated a respectful, and therefore subtle, suggestion that the past was very much the present for him.  She hastened to expand upon Dory, upon his work; and, as she talked of the university, she found she had a pride in it, and an interest, and a knowledge, too, which astonished her.  And Ross listened, made appreciative comments.  And so, on and on.  When Henrietta came they were laughing and talking like the best of old friends; and at Ross’s invitation the three lunched at the club and spent the afternoon together.

“I think marriage has improved Ross,” said Henrietta, as she and Adelaide were driving home together after tea—­tea with Ross.

“Theresa is a very sweet woman,” said Adelaide dutifully.

“Oh, I don’t mean that—­any more than you do,” replied Henrietta.  “I mean marriage has chastened him—­the only way it ever improves anybody.”

“No doubt he and Theresa are happy together,” said Adelaide, clinging to her pretense with a persistence that might have given her interesting and valuable light upon herself had she noted it.

“Happy?” Henrietta Hastings laughed.  “Only stupid people are happy, my dear.  Theresa may be happy, but not Ross.  He’s far too intelligent.  And Theresa isn’t capable of giving him even those moments of happiness that repay the intelligent for their routine of the other sort of thing.”