It was said archly but also in the way that always made him vaguely uneasy, made him feel like one facing a mystery which should be explored cautiously.  “It is graceful,” he admitted, with a smile since he could not venture to frown.  “Graceful—­but slow.”

She laughed—­and he could not but feel that the greater laughter in her too innocent eyes was directed at him.  She talked of other things—­and he let her—­charmed, yet cursing his folly, his slavery, the while.

X

Many a time he had pitied a woman for letting him get away from her, when she obviously wished to hold him and failed solely because she did not understand her business.  Like every other man, he no sooner began to be attracted by a woman than he began to invest her with a mystery and awe which she either could dissipate by forcing him to see the truth of her commonplaceness or could increase into a power that would enslave him by keeping him agitated and interested and ever satisfied yet ever baffled.  But no woman had shown this supreme skill in the art of love—­until Dorothy Hallowell.  She exasperated him.  She fascinated him.  She kept him so restless that his professional work was all but neglected.  Was it her skill?  Was it her folly?  Was she simply leading him on and on, guided blindly by woman’s instinct to get as much as she could and to give as little as she dared?  Or was she protected by a real indifference to him—­the strongest, indeed the only invulnerable armor a woman can wear?  Was she protecting herself?  Or was it merely that he, weakened by his infatuation, was doing the protecting for her?

Beside these distracting questions, the once all-important matter of professional and worldly ambition seemed not worth troubling about.  They even so vexed him that he had become profoundly indifferent as to Josephine.  He saw her rarely.  When they were alone he either talked neutral subjects or sat almost mute, hardly conscious of her presence.  He received her efforts at the customary caressings with such stolidity that she soon ceased to annoy him.  They reduced their outward show of affection to a kiss when they met, another when they separated.  He was tired—­always tired—­worn out—­half sick—­harassed by business concerns.  He did not trouble himself about whether his listless excuses would be accepted or not.  He did not care what she thought—­or might think—­or might do.

Josephine was typical of the women of the comfortable class.  For them the fundamentally vital matters of life—­the profoundly harassing questions of food, clothing, and shelter—­are arranged and settled.  What is there left to occupy their minds?  Little but the idle emotions they manufacture and spread foglike over their true natures to hide the barrenness, the monotony.  They fool with phrases about art or love or religion or charity—­for none of those things can be vivid realities to those