“He really believes that,” Myra said to Hollister once.  “No Bland ever had to work.  They have always had property—­they have always been superior people.  Jim’s an anachronism, really.  He belongs in the Middle Ages when the barons did the fighting and the commoners did the work.  Generations of riding in the bandwagon has made it almost impossible for a man like that to plan intelligently and work hard merely for the satisfaction of his needs.”

“I wonder what he’d do if there was no inheritance to fall back on?” Hollister asked.

“I don’t know—­and I really don’t care much,” Myra said indifferently.  “I shouldn’t be concerned, probably, if that were the case.”

Hollister frowned.

“Why do you go on living with him, if that’s the way you feel?”

“You seem to forget,” she replied, “that there are very material reasons!  And you must remember that I don’t dislike Jim.  I have got so that I regard him as a big, good-natured child of whom one expects very little.”

“How in heaven’s name did a man like that catch your fancy in the first place?” Hollister asked.  He had never ceased to wonder about that.  Myra looked at him with a queer lowering of her eyes.

“What’s the use of telling you?” she exclaimed petulantly.  “You ought to understand without telling.  What was it drove you into Doris Cleveland’s arms a month after you met her?  You couldn’t know her—­nor she you.  You were lonely and moody, and something about her appealed to you.  You took a chance—­and drew a prize in the lottery.  Well, I took a chance also—­and drew a blank.  I’m a woman and he’s a man, a very good sort of a man for any woman who wants nothing more of a man than that he shall be a handsome, agreeable, well-mannered animal.  That’s about what Jim is.  I may also be good-looking, agreeable, well-mannered—­a fairly desirable woman to all outward appearances—­but I’m something besides, which Jim doesn’t suspect and couldn’t understand if he did.  But I didn’t learn that soon enough.”

“When did you learn it?” Hollister asked.  He felt that he should not broach these intimately personal matters with Myra, but there was a fascination in listening to her reveal complexes of character which he had never suspected, which he should have known.

“I’ve been learning for some time; but I think Charlie Mills gave me the most striking lesson,” Myra answered thoughtfully.  “You can imagine I was blue and dissatisfied when we came here, to bury ourselves alive because we could live cheaply, and he could hunt and fish to his heart’s content while he waited to step into a dead man’s shoes.  A wife’s place, you see, is in the home, and home is wherever and whatever her lord and master chooses to make it.  I was quite conscious by that time that I didn’t love Jim Bland.  But he was a gentleman.  He didn’t offend me.  I was simply indifferent—­satiated, if you like.  I used to sit wondering how I could have ever imagined myself going on year after year, contented and happy, with a man like Jim.  Yet I had been quite sure of that—­just as once I had been quite sure you were the only man who could ever be much of a figure on my horizon.  Do you think I’m facile and shallow?  I’m not really.  I’m not just naturally a sensation-seeker.  I hate promiscuity. He convinced me of that.”