The charming Lieutenant Beck became sought after everywhere, and his success with the ladies resulted in his having very soon established sentimental relations with nearly every member of the fair circle around him.  He nearly always had a flower in his buttonhole when he came home, which had been jokingly given to him as a gage d’amour by some one or other of his admirers; he received presents from all sides; and they, in fact, laid a sort of embargo upon him as an object of general admiration.

There was nothing to say against all this—­far from it; but the only person who felt left out in the cold was his own wife, who seemed to see this enthusiastic crowd gradually establishing, as it were, a prescriptive right of way between herself and her husband, and treading under foot the very flowers that should have grown only for their own two selves in the intimacy of their home.  She became gradually a less animated, but was still, he thought, an interested listener, when he came home after being in the society of his lady friends, and recounted his triumphs.  If this was so, she at all events began to be more particular about her own dress and appearance, and set to work now to systematically cultivate the social talent which she naturally possessed.  She determined to conquer her rivals, who had the advantage of her in appearance, but were inferior to her in talent; and she succeeded.  But she became naturally an object for their criticism in consequence.

The only one with whom she did not succeed was her husband.  His self-love was far too much taken up with the small flatteries of all kinds, and the homage of which he was the object, to have any eyes for the very great compliment indeed which was being paid to him by his wife in the line which she had adopted.  To her he was married, and therefore of her he was always sure enough.

It was from that time that she dated the influence which she usually acquired in the social circles she frequented, and which her husband’s position and circumstances made it easy for her to maintain when they changed their residence to Arendal.

But those first years of their married life had not passed without a serious, and to her completely decisive, eclaircissement.  It was occasioned by his relations with the wife of an officer of rank, which had become really more intimate than her pride could stand, although she knew very well that on her husband’s side it was only a sort of mixture of vanity and policy that prompted his affectation of devotion.  She had treated the lady with marked coldness at a party where they had met, and her husband had taken her to task for it when they got home.

Entirely wrapped up in himself as he was, it had never occurred to him that his wife could have any cause of complaint against him, and what she had been going through had been altogether lost upon him.  She did not say much now in reply to his reproaches—­she merely stood and looked at him in a way that made him feel rather uncomfortable, and then quietly left the room.  He could hear her going with slow steps up the stairs.