“I wouldn’t marry a man who couldn’t support me!” she used to blaze.

As a matter of fact, he had felt the same way about it—­he felt that way still.  It hurt him to think that Helen should be wearing the badge of his inefficiency.  And then, deep down, he had a masculine distaste for sharing his workday world with a woman.  He liked to preserve the mystery of those hours spent in the fight for existence, because he knew instinctively that battle grounds lost their glamour at close range.  His Californian inheritance had fostered the mining-camp attitude toward females—­they were one of two things:  men’s moral equals or men’s moral superiors.  It was well enough to meet an equal on common ground, but one felt in duty bound to enshrine a superior being in reasonable seclusion.

At first he had been doubtful of Helen’s ability to adapt herself to such a radical change.  Her performance soon set his mind at rest on that score, but he still could not recover quite from the surprise of her unexpected decision.  Indifference, amazement, opposition—­nothing seemed able to sway her from her purpose.  In the end he had been too touched by her attitude to put his foot down firmly against the move...  She got on well with Hilmer, too, he noticed.  Usually at the end of one of these late afternoon conferences with their chief patron Fred and Hilmer ended up by shaking for an early evening cocktail at Collins & Wheeland’s, just around the corner.  Hilmer always saw to it that Fred returned to the office with something for Helen—­a handful of ginger-snaps from the free-lunch counter, a ham sandwich, or a paper of ripe olives.  Once he stopped in a candy shop on Leidesdorff Street and bought two ice-cream cornucopias.  Fred used to shake a puzzled head as he deposited these gastronomic trifles upon Helen’s desk as he said: 

“I don’t get this man Hilmer...  One minute he insults you and the next minute he’s as considerate as a canteen worker...  What’s he throwing business my way for?”

Helen, munching a gingersnap, would go on with her laborious typewriting, and return: 

“Why look a gift horse in the mouth, Freddie?...  Women aren’t the only riddles in the world.”

“I think he comes to see you,” he used to throw out in obvious jest.  “That’s the only way I can figure it.”

“He’s like every man ... he wants an audience...  I guess Mother Hilmer is tired of hearing him rave.”

And so the banter would go on until Fred would pull up with a round turn, realizing quite suddenly that he was talking to his wife and not just to his stenographer.

“He’ll be at me one of these days on that commission question, you mark my words,” he would venture.

“And what are you going to do?”

“Why, refuse, of course, and lose the business.”

“Well, don’t cross the bridge till you come to it.”

She puzzled him more and more.  She seemed disturbed at nothing, and yet she glowed with a leashed restlessness that he could not define.