“Why!  I didn’t know Miss Draper had returned,” I said, wondering why Dicky had kept the knowledge from me.

“I didn’t know it myself,” Dicky answered, frowning.  “Queer, she wouldn’t call me up.  Wonder who that jackanapes with her is, anyway.”

Dicky was moody all the rest of the trip.  I know that he has the most easily wounded feelings of any one in the world, and naturally he resented the fact that the beautiful model, whom he had befriended and who was his secretary and studio assistant, had returned from her trip without letting him know she was at home.

If I only could be sure that pique at an employee’s failure to report to him was at the bottom of his sulkiness!  But the memory of the good-looking youth who hung over the girl so assiduously was before my eyes.  I feared that the reason for Dicky’s moody displeasure was the presence of the unknown admirer of his beautiful model.

Of course, all pleasure in the day’s outing was gone for me also, and we were a silent pair as we wandered in and out through the sandy beaches.  Dicky conscientiously, but perfunctorily, pointed out to me all the things which he thought I would find interesting, and in which, under any other circumstances, I should have revelled.

In my resolution to be as chummy with Dicky as possible, I determined to put down my own feelings toward Grace Draper.  But it was an effort for me to say what I wished to Dicky.  We had chatted about many things, and were nearly home, when I said timidly: 

“Dicky, now that Miss Draper is back, don’t you think you and I ought to call on her and her sister, and have them over to dinner?”

Dicky frowned impatiently: 

“For heaven’s sake, don’t monkey with that old cat, Mrs. Gorman.  She is making trouble enough as it is.”

He bit his lip the next instant, as if he wished the words unsaid, and, for a wonder, I was wise enough not to question him as to the meaning of the little speech.  But into my heart crept my own particular little suspicious devil—­always too ready to come, is this small familiar demon of mine—­and once there he stayed, continually whispering ugly doubts and queries concerning the “trouble” that Mrs. Gorman was making over her sister’s intimate studio association with my husband.

My constant brooding affected my spirits.  I found myself growing irritable.  The next day after Dicky and I had seen Miss Draper and her attendant cavalier on the road to Marvin harbor, Dicky made a casual reference at the table to the fact that she had returned to the studio and her work as his secretary and model.

“She said she called up the studio when she got in, and again yesterday morning, but I was not in,” he said.  I realized that the girl had cleverly soothed his resentment at her failure to notify him that she had returned from her trip.

Whether it was the result of my own irritability or not I do not know, but Dicky seemed to grow more indifferent and absent-minded each day.  He was not irritable with me, he simply had the air of a man absorbed in some pursuit and indifferent to everything else.