He went out for a long walk, and she went to her room.  They lunched silently together in the presence of their children, who knew that they had been quarrelling, but were easily indifferent to the fact, as children get to be in such cases; nature defends their youth, and the unhappiness which they behold does not infect them.  In the evening, after the boy and girl had gone to bed, the father and mother resumed their talk.  He would have liked to take it up at the point from which it wandered into hostilities, for he felt it lamentable that a matter which so seriously concerned them should be confused in the fumes of senseless anger; and he was willing to make a tacit acknowledgment of his own error by recurring to the question, but she would not be content with this, and he had to concede explicitly to her weakness that she really meant it when she had asked him to accept Fulkerson’s offer.  He said he knew that; and he began soberly to talk over their prospects in the event of their going to New York.

“Oh, I see you are going!” she twitted.

“I’m going to stay,” he answered, “and let them turn me out of my agency here,” and in this bitterness their talk ended.

V.

His wife made no attempt to renew their talk before March went to his business in the morning, and they parted in dry offence.  Their experience was that these things always came right of themselves at last, and they usually let them.  He knew that she had really tried to consent to a thing that was repugnant to her, and in his heart he gave her more credit for the effort than he had allowed her openly.  She knew that she had made it with the reservation he accused her of, and that he had a right to feel sore at what she could not help.  But he left her to brood over his ingratitude, and she suffered him to go heavy and unfriended to meet the chances of the day.  He said to himself that if she had assented cordially to the conditions of Fulkerson’s offer, he would have had the courage to take all the other risks himself, and would have had the satisfaction of resigning his place.  As it was, he must wait till he was removed; and he figured with bitter pleasure the pain she would feel when he came home some day and told her he had been supplanted, after it was too late to close with Fulkerson.

He found a letter on his desk from the secretary, “Dictated,” in typewriting, which briefly informed him that Mr. Hubbell, the Inspector of Agencies, would be in Boston on Wednesday, and would call at his office during the forenoon.  The letter was not different in tone from many that he had formerly received; but the visit announced was out of the usual order, and March believed he read his fate in it.  During the eighteen years of his connection with it—­first as a subordinate in the Boston office, and finally as its general agent there—­he had seen a good many changes in the Reciprocity; presidents,