Julia did not answer.  She got into the car and settled herself for the run; so much of the day at least would be pleasant.  It was the close of a lovely summer afternoon, the long shadows of the trees lay ahead of them on the road, the sky was palest blue and palest pink, a flock of white baby clouds lay low against the eastern horizon.  The warm air bore the clean good scent of wilting grass and hot pine sap.  The car rolled along smoothly, its motion stirring the still air into a breeze.  Mr. Billings, sitting next to Julia, began an interested disquisition upon the difficulties of breeding genuine, bat-eared, French bulldogs.  Julia scarcely heard him, but she nodded now and then, and now and then her blue eyes met his; once she gratified him with a dreamy smile.  This quite satisfied Morgan Billings, to whom it never occurred that Julia’s thoughts might be on the beauties of the rolling landscape, and her smile for the first star that came prickling through the soft twilight.

And after a while some aching need of her soul grew less urgent, and some of the wistfulness left her face.  She forgot the ideals that had come with her into her married life, and crushed down the conviction that Jim, like all men, liked his wife to slip into the kitchen and concoct some little sweet for his supper, even with an artist like Foo Ting at his command.  She realized that when she declined old Mrs. Chickering’s luncheon invitation for the mere pleasure of rushing home to have lunch with Jim, her only reward might be a disapproving:  “My Lord!  Julia, I hope you didn’t offend Mrs. Chickering!  She’s been so decent to us!”

It was as if Julia, offering high interest on her marriage bond, had at last learned that one tenth of what she would pay would satisfy Jim.  Feeling as she did that no demonstration on his part, no inclination to monopolize her, would do more than satisfy her longing to be all in all to him, it was not an easy lesson.  For a while she could not believe that he knew his own happiness in the matter, and a dispassionate onlooker might have found infinitely pathetic the experimental temerity with which she told him that this invitation had been accepted, this social obligation incurred, this empty Sunday filled to overflowing with engagements.

And now Jim approved, and Julia had to hide in the depth of her hurt soul the fact that she had never dreamed he could approve.  However tired, he liked to come home to the necessity of immediately assuming evening dress, and going out into the night again.  He and Julia held a cheerful conversation between their dressing-rooms as they dressed; later they chattered eagerly enough in the limousine, Jim enthusiastic over his wife’s gown, and risking a kiss on her bare shoulder when the car turned down a dark street.  Jim, across a brilliant table, in a strange house, did not seem to Julia to belong to her at all; but it was almost as if he found his wife more fascinating when the eyes of outsiders were upon her, and admired Julia in a ballroom more than he did when they had the library and the lamplight to themselves, at home.