Imbued with the highest ambition of my time, I had set my barque on a great circle, and almost before I realized it the barque was burdened with a wife and family and the steering had insensibly become more difficult; for Maude cared nothing about the destination, and when I took any hand off the wheel our ship showed a tendency to make for a quiet harbour.  Thus the social initiative, which I believed should have been the woman’s, was thrust back on me.  It was almost incredible, yet indisputable, in a day when most American women were credited with a craving for social ambition that I, of all men, should have married a wife in whom the craving was wholly absent!  She might have had what other women would have given their souls for.  There were many reasons why I wished her to take what I deemed her proper place in the community as my wife—­not that I cared for what is called society in the narrow sense; with me, it was a logical part of a broader scheme of life; an auxiliary rather than an essential, but a needful auxiliary; a means of dignifying and adorning the position I was taking.  Not only that, but I felt the need of intercourse—­of intercourse of a lighter and more convivial nature with men and women who saw life as I saw it.  In the evenings when we did not go out into that world our city afforded ennui took possession of me:  I had never learned to care for books, I had no resources outside of my profession, and when I was not working on some legal problem I dawdled over the newspapers and went to bed.  I don’t mean to imply that our existence, outside of our continued intimacy with the Peterses and the Blackwoods, was socially isolated.  We gave little dinners that Maude carried out with skill and taste; but it was I who suggested them; we went out to other dinners, sometimes to Nancy’s—­though we saw less and less of her—­sometimes to other houses.  But Maude had given evidence of domestic tastes and a disinclination for gaiety that those who entertained more were not slow to sense.  I should have liked to take a larger house, but I felt the futility of suggesting it; the children were still small, and she was occupied with them.  Meanwhile I beheld, and at times with considerable irritation, the social world changing, growing larger and more significant, a more important function of that higher phase of American existence the new century seemed definitely to have initiated.  A segregative process was away to which Maude was wholly indifferent.  Our city was throwing off its social conservatism; wealth (which implied ability and superiority) was playing a greater part, entertainments were more luxurious, lines more strictly drawn.  We had an elaborate country club for those who could afford expensive amusements.  Much of this transformation had been due to the initiative and leadership of Nancy Durrett....