However that may be, when he walked into the sitting room, greeted her placidly and kissed her on the brow, she, glancing uncertainly up at him, saw that danger signal for the first time.  She studied his face, her own face wearing her expression of the puzzled child.  No, not quite that expression as it always had been theretofore, but a modified form of it.  To any self-centered, self-absorbed woman—­there comes in her married life, unless she be married to a booby, a time, an hour, a moment even—­for it can be narrowed down to a point—­when she takes her first seeing look at the man upon whom she is dependent for protection, whether spiritual or material, or both.  In her egotism and vanity she has been regarding him as her property.  Suddenly, and usually disagreeably, it has been revealed to her that she is his property.  That hour had come for Dorothy Norman.  And she was looking at her husband, was wondering who and what he was.

“You’ve had your lunch?” he said.

“No,” replied she.

“You have been out for the air?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You didn’t tell me what to do.”

He smiled good humoredly.  “Oh, you had no money.”

“Yes—­a little.  But I—­” She halted.

“Yes?”

“You hadn’t told me what to do,” she repeated, as if on mature thought that sentence expressed the whole matter.

He felt in his pockets, found a small roll of bills.  He laid twenty-five dollars on the table.  “I’ll keep thirty,” he said, “as I shan’t have any more till I see Tetlow to-morrow.  Now, fly out and amuse yourself.  I’m going to sleep.  Don’t wake me till you’re ready for dinner.”

And he went into his bedroom and closed the door.  When he awoke, he saw that it was dark outside, and some note in the din of street noises from far below made him feel that it was late.  He wrapped a bathrobe round him, opened the door into the sitting room.  It was dark.

“Dorothy!” he called.

“Yes,” promptly responded the small quiet voice, so near that he started back.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, and switched on the light.  “There you are—­by the window.  What were you doing, in the dark?”

She was dressed precisely as when he had last seen her.  She was sitting with her hands listless in her lap and her face a moving and beautiful expression of melancholy dreams.  On the table were the bills—­where he had laid them.  “You’ve been out?” he said.

“No,” she replied.

“Why not?”

“I’ve been—­waiting.”

“For what?” laughed he.

“For—­I don’t know,” she replied.  “Just waiting.”

“But there’s nothing to wait for.”

She looked at him interrogatively.  “No—­I suppose not,” she said.

He went back into his room and glanced at his watch.  “Eleven o’clock!” he cried.  “Why didn’t you wake me?  You must be nearly starved.”