Then came a succession of long intimate evenings, she and Oliver left to their caprice, she and Oliver walking and driving together, wandering where their fancy took them in the springtime of city and country.  She laughed sometimes at him, he seemed so dazed by the consciousness of utter possession.  “You are sure you are not bored, darling?” he would often ask these first days.  She could not reassure him enough; could not find ways enough to prove to him that when a woman like herself gave of body, mind, and spirit, it was a full giving.  There was exquisite pain in that giving; it was almost a terrifying thing.  She was a vital creature, and must spend that which was hers, wisely or foolishly.  Her ceaseless energy had always before found an outlet in her work.  Now her only expression lay in Oliver.  Her mind, never at rest, seized upon his working life, made it hers.  But she soon learned that he regarded her self-appointed post of partner with a tender condescension edged with intolerance.  She learned with a tiny shock that although in matters musical he trusted absolutely to her judgment, he did not consider the feminine intellect as equal to his own.  Music, she discovered, had always been defined by him as something feminine in its application to the arts.

She became gradually aware that he objected to her visits to his office.  His glance did not brighten at her entrance.  He was not amused as he had been at first, when she bent over the sketches or ran her slim fingers along the tracery of blue prints, daring to question them.  Sometimes she had a feeling that she did not entirely know Oliver; that there were plans of his, thoughts of his, which she did not share.  She had not missed these before when her own life was full.  She had time now during their long hours together to observe reactions of the cause of which she knew nothing.  He was absent-minded, off on a trail that led away from her.

There came a week when he allowed her the brunt of wooing; a new dress failed to bring forth the usual compliment; a question lay unanswered where in pride she left it.  Then one morning with a new crisp note in his voice, he telephoned, telling her that he must meet a man at his club for dinner that evening.  Mechanically she answered, dully heard his voice warm to a sweetness that should have comforted her.

“You know I wouldn’t leave you unless it were important, dearest.  I can’t explain now, but I may have great news for you when I come home.”

She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, and turned to an apartment which seemed suddenly dreary and empty.  She had no purpose in her day.  The twilight hour loomed in prospect an endless, dusky loneliness.  For a moment she thought of ringing him up and proposing to meet him downtown for lunch; then restrained the impulse.  Was she to turn into a nagging wife!  She longed now for some friend with whom she could spend the day; but she could think of none.  Since her marriage with Oliver she had not encouraged intimacies.  On his account she had estranged the few women to whom she might now have turned.  Oliver had never understood friendships among women.