“Not things, not—­not toys,” Trixton Brent’s expression involuntarily coming to her lips.  “Oh, can’t you see I’m not that kind of a woman?  I don’t want to be bought.  I want you, whatever you are, if you are.  I want to be saved.  Take care of me—­see a little more of me—­be a little interested in what I think.  God gave me a mind, and—­other men have discovered it.  You don’t know, you can’t know, what temptations you subject me to.  It isn’t right, Howard.  And oh, it is humiliating not to be able to interest one’s husband.”

“But you do interest me,” he protested.

She shook her head.

“Not so much as your business,” she said; “not nearly so much.”

“Perhaps I have been too absorbed,” he confessed.  “One thing has followed another.  I didn’t suspect that you felt this way.  Come, I’ll try to brace up.”  He pressed her to him.  “Don’t feel badly.  You’re overwrought.  You’ve exaggerated the situation, Honora.  We’ll go in on the eight o’clock train together and look at the house—­although I’m afraid it’s a little steep,” he added cautiously.

“I don’t care anything about the house,” said Honora.  “I don’t want it.”

“There!” he said soothingly, “you’ll feel differently in the morning.  We’ll go and look at it, anyway.”

Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is one day struck by a falling brick.  Howard had not thought of consulting her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands.  And, although he might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered a more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions.  Business demands peace at any price.  And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in so different a manner, recurred to him.

The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a disintegrator of the night’s fantasies.  It awoke Honora at what for her was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her husband whistling in his room.  It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame.  Unimagined numbers of America’s women possess that quality—­a fact that is becoming more and more apparent every day.

“Why, Honora!” Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table.  “What’s happened to you?”

“Have you forgotten already,” she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her coffee, “that we are going to town together?”

He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.

“How much do you think Mrs. Farnham—­or Mrs. Rindge—­is worth?” he asked.