her husband’s sympathies; while he was becoming more deeply absorbed in a profession that required close application of thought, intellectual force and clearness, and cold, practical modes of looking at all questions that came up for consideration.  The consequence was that they were, in all their common interests, modes of thinking and habits of regarding the affairs of life, steadily receding from each other.  Their evenings were now less frequently spent together.  If home had been a pleasant place to him, Mr. Emerson would have usually remained at home after the day’s duties were over; or, if he went abroad, it would have been usually in company with his wife.  But home was getting to be dull, if not positively disagreeable.  If a conversation was started, it soon involved disagreement in sentiment, and then came argument, and perhaps ungentle words, followed by silence and a mutual writing down in the mind of bitter things.  If there was no conversation, Irene buried herself in a book—­some absorbing novel, usually of the heroic school.

Naturally, under this state of things, Mr. Emerson, who was social in disposition, sought companionship elsewhere, and with his own sex.  Brought into contact with men of different tastes, feelings and habits of thinking, he gradually selected a few as intimate friends, and, in association with these, formed, as his wife was doing, a social point of interest outside of his home; thus widening still further the space between them.

The home duties involved in housekeeping, indifferently as they had always been discharged by Irene, were now becoming more and more distasteful to her.  This daily care about mere eating and drinking seemed unworthy of a woman who had noble aspirations, such as burned in her breast.  That was work for women-drudges who had no higher ambition; “and Heaven knows,” she would often say to herself, “there are enough and to spare of these.”

“What’s the use of keeping up an establishment like this just for two people?” she would often remark to her husband; and he would usually reply,

“For the sake of having a home into which one may retire and shut out the world.”

Irene would sometimes suggest the lighter expense of boarding.

“If it cost twice as much I would prefer to live in my own house,” was the invariable answer.

“But see what a burden of care it lays on my shoulders.”

Now Hartley could only with difficulty repress a word of impatient rebuke when this argument was used.  He thought of his own daily devotion to business, prolonged often into the night, when an important case was on hand, and mentally charged his wife with a selfish love of ease.  On the other hand, it seemed to Irene that her husband was selfish in wishing her to bear the burdens of housekeeping just for his pleasure or convenience, when they might live as comfortably in a hotel or boarding-house.

On this subject Hartley would not enter into a discussion.  “It’s no use talking, Irene,” he would say, when she grew in earnest.  “You cannot tempt me to give up my home.  It includes many things that with me are essential to comfort.  I detest boarding-houses; they are only places for sojourning, not living.”