“I’ll have to run over to New York to-morrow.  I wanted Joe to go alone, but he thinks he needs me.”  Joe was his partner.  “Oh.  So Joe’s going?”

“That’s what I said.”

She was silent.  Joe’s going was clever of him.  It gave authenticity to his business, and it kept her at home.

“How long shall you be gone?”

“Only a day or two.”  He could not entirely keep the relief out of his voice.  It had been easy, incredibly easy.  He might have done it a month ago.  And he had told the truth; Joe was going.

“I’ll pack to-night, and take my suitcase in with me in the morning.”

“If you’ll get your things out I’ll pack them.”  She was still thinking, but her tone was indifferent.  “You won’t want your dress clothes, of course.”

“I’d better have a dinner suit.”

She looked at him then, with a half contemptuous smile.  “Yes,” she said slowly.  “I suppose you will.  You’ll be going to the theater.”

He glanced away.

“Possibly.  But we’ll be rushing to get through.  There’s a lot to do.  Amazing how business piles up when you find you’re going anywhere.  There won’t be much time to play.”

She sat before the mirror in her small dressing-room that night, ostensibly preparing for bed but actually taking stock of her situation.  She had done all she could, had been faithful and loyal, had made his home attractive, had catered to his tastes and tried to like his friends, had met his needs and responded to them.  And now, this.  She was bewildered and frightened.  How did women hold their husbands?

She found him in bed and unmistakably asleep when she went into the bedroom.  Man-like, having got his way, he was not troubled by doubts or introspection.  It was done.

He was lying on his back, with his mouth open.  She felt a sudden and violent repugnance to getting into the bed beside him.  Sometime in the night he would turn over and throwing his arm about her, hold her close in his sleep; and it would be purely automatic, the mechanical result of habit.

She lay on the edge of the bed and thought things over.

He had his good qualities.  He was kind and affectionate to her family.  He had been wonderful when Jim died, and he loved Elizabeth dearly.  He was generous and open-handed.  He was handsome, too, in a big, heavy way.

She began to find excuses for him.  Men were always a child-like prey to some women.  They were vain, and especially they were sex-vain; good looking men were a target for every sort of advance.  She transferred her loathing of him to the woman she suspected of luring him away from her, and lay for hours hating her.

She saw Leslie off in the morning with a perfunctory good-bye while cold anger and suspicion seethed in her.  And later she put on her hat and went home to lay the situation before her mother.  Mrs. Wheeler was out, however, and she found only Elizabeth sewing by her window.