The marriage was not quite two weeks away.  About the time that the ordinary plausible excuses for Norman’s neglect, his abstraction, his seeming indifference were exhausted, Josephine’s vanity came forward to explain everything to her, all to her own glory.  As the elysian hour approached—­so vanity assured her—­the man who loved her as her complex soul and many physical and social advantages deserved was overcome with that shy terror of which she had read in the poets and the novelists.  A large income, fashionable attire and surroundings, a carriage and a maid—­these things gave a woman a subtle and superior intellect and soul.  How?  Why?  No one knew.  But everyone admitted, indeed saw, the truth.  Further, these beings—­these great ladies—­according to all the accredited poets, novelists, and other final authorities upon life—­always inspired the most awed and worshipful and diffident feelings in their lovers.  Therefore, she—­the great lady—­was getting but her due.  She would have liked something else—­something common and human—­much better.  But, having always led her life as the conventions dictated, never as the common human heart yearned, she had no keen sense of dissatisfaction to rouse her to revolt and to question.  Also, she was breathlessly busy with trousseau and the other arrangements for the grand wedding.

One afternoon she telephoned Norman asking him to come on his way home that evening.  “I particularly wish to see you,” she said.  He thought her voice sounded rather queer, but he did not take sufficient interest to speculate about it.  When he was with her in the small drawing room on the second floor, he noted that her eyes were regarding him strangely.  He thought he understood why when she said: 

“Aren’t you going to kiss me, Fred?”

He put on his good-natured, slightly mocking smile.  “I thought you were too busy for that sort of thing nowadays.”  And he bent and kissed her waiting lips.  Then he lit a cigarette and seated himself on the sofa beside her—­the sofa at right angles to the open fire.  “Well?” he said.

She gazed into the fire for full a minute before she said in a voice of constraint, “What became of that—­that girl—­the Miss Hallowell——­”

She broke off abruptly.  There was a pause choked with those dizzy pulsations that fill moments of silence and strain.  Then with a sob she flung herself against his breast and buried her face in his shoulder.  “Don’t answer!” she cried.  “I’m ashamed of myself.  I’m ashamed—­ashamed!”

He put his arm about her shoulders.  “But why shouldn’t I answer?” said he in the kindly gentle tone we can all assume when a matter that agitates some one else is wholly indifferent to us.

“Because—­it was a—­a trap,” she answered hysterically.  “Fred—­there was a man here this afternoon—­a man named Tetlow.  He got in only because he said he came from you.”

Norman laughed quietly.  “Poor Tetlow!” he said.  “He used to be your head clerk—­didn’t he?”