_What_ did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her thoughtfulness in small things, increased. III |There came a day when he could stand this self-torture no longer, he thought. He came home from his office--Clarke was a partner in a prosperous real-estate concern--at an hour when he thought his wife not yet returned from an afternoon of call making, determined to end the matter once for all. He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. He found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key. Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it open! With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something with which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would take it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. He turned, just as his wife entered the room. Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights, it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her gaze. He essayed a clumsy lie: “Agnes,” he began, indicating the desk, “I--I got a bill to-day from Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know--I was sure that the account had been settled--that you had paid them, and had shown me the receipt--that you had paid them from your allowance, you know--and I thought I would come home and look up the receipt.” It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while he was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down on the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands. “The receipt is here,” she said; and got it for him. The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each other, and they both trembled with agitation. Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred to it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and fumbling hands, and played out the deception. Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the story were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of softness--almost of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready to try and melt him into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! Well, that would not work with him! And with the receipted bill waving in his hand, he made it the text of a lecture on extravagance, into which he plunged with vehemence.