Before the baby was two years old, his belief was rewarded.  Things began to run better—­began to run well, even.  Dorothy—­a serious person, unhampered of a keen sense of humor, had taught herself the duties of her new position in much the same slow plodding way in which she had formerly made of herself a fair stenographer and a tolerable typewriter.  Mrs. Lowell had helped—­and Ursula, too—­and Norman not a little.  But Dorothy, her husband discovered, was one of those who thoroughly assimilate what they take in—­who make it over into part of themselves.  So, her manner of keeping house, of arranging the gardens, of bringing up the baby, of dressing herself, was peculiarly her own.  It was not by any means the best imaginable way.  It was even what many energetic, systematic and highly competent persons would speak contemptuously of.  But it satisfied Norman—­and that was all Dorothy had in mind.

If those who have had any considerable opportunity to observe married life will forget what they have read in novels and will fix their minds on what they have observed at first hand, they will recognize the Norman marriage, with the husband and wife living together yet apart as not peculiar but of a rather common type.  Neither Fred nor Dorothy had any especial reason on any given day to try to alter their relations; so the law of inertia asserted itself and matters continued as they had begun.  It was, perhaps, a chance remark of Tetlow’s that was the remote but efficient cause of a change, as the single small stone slipping high up on the mountain side results in a vast landslide into the valley miles below.  Tetlow said one day, in connection with some estate they were settling: 

“I’ve always pitied the only child.  It must be miserably lonesome.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he colored violently; for, he remembered that the Normans had but one child and he knew the probable reason for it.  Norman seemed not to have heard or seen.  Tetlow hoped he hadn’t, but, knowing the man, feared otherwise.  And he was right.

In the press of other matters Norman forgot Tetlow’s remark—­remembered it again a few days later when he was taking the baby out for an airing in the motor—­forgot it again—­finally, when he took a several days’ rest at home, remembered it and kept it in mind.  He began to think of Dorothy once more in a definite, personal way, began to observe her as his wife, instead of as mere part of his establishment.  An intellectual person she certainly was not.  She had a quaint individual way of speaking and of acting.  She had the marvelous changeable beauty that had once caused him to take the bit in his teeth and run wild.  But he would no more think of talking with her about the affairs that really interested him than—­well, than the other men of large career in his acquaintance would think of talking those matters to their wives.