“I would like to suggest,” Jim said incisively, “that the less you let your mind run on those little girls from St. Anne’s, the better for you!  If you have no consideration for my feelings in this matter, Julie, for your own I should think you would consider such topics absolutely—­well, absolutely in poor taste!”

Silence.  Jim puffed on his cigar.  Julia sat without stirring, feeling that every drop of blood in her body had rushed to her head.  The muscles of her temples and throat ached, her eyes saw only a green-and-gold dazzle, her wet little hands gripped the arms of her chair.

“It is all very well to criticise these people,” pursued Jim sententiously, after a long silence, “although they have all been kindness and graciousness itself to you!  They may be shallow, they may be silly; I don’t hold any brief for Minna Vane and Paula Billings.  But I know that Minna is on the Hospital Board, and Paula a mighty kind-hearted, good little woman, and they don’t sit around pulling long faces, and wishing they were living south of Market Street!”

Julia sat perfectly still.  She could not have battled with the lump in her throat if life had depended upon her speaking.  She felt her chest strain with a terrible rush of sobbing, but she held herself stiffly, and only prayed that her tears might be kept back until she was alone.

“Hello!  Here’s Greg,” Jim said cheerfully, after another silence.  And here, truly, was Alan Gregory, a red-faced, smooth-shaven young man, already slightly hilarious and odorous of drink, and very gallant to beautiful Mrs. Studdiford.  A great silky veil must be tied over Julia’s hat; sure she was warm enough?  Might be late, might get cold, you know.

“Shall I get you your white coat, dear?” Jim asked solicitously.

“Oh, no, thank you, Jim!”

Then they were off, and Julia told herself that men and their wives often quarrelled this way; it was a common enough thing to have some woman announce, with a casual laugh, that she and her husband had had a “terrible scene,” and “weren’t speaking.”  Only, with Jim it seemed so different!  It seemed so direfully, so hopelessly wrong!

She felt a hypocrite when they joined the others, and when she presently found herself laughing and talking with them all, even with Jim.  And through the jolly afternoon and noisy evening she found herself watching her husband, when she could do so unobserved, with gravely analytical eyes.  No barbed sentence of his could long affect her, for Julia had pondered and prayed too long over this matter to find any fresh distress in a reminder of it.  Her natural simple honesty very soon adjusted the outraged sensibilities.  But Jim could hurt himself with his wife, and this afternoon he had done so.  Unconsciously Julia said to herself, over and over, “Oh, he should not have said that!  That was not kind!”