"Did she know what was the matter with you?" "Yes, but she pretended not to know whom it was I cared for." "She knew that, too?" "All the time. She never forced anything on me, she just stood by, and helped me weather it. Last summer she put the finishing touches on my cure. I love her as I never loved any human being." "I didn't know about this." "Of course not. You were too busy with Althea to notice what Jane was making of the pieces you had left of me. Sort of poetic justice, after all." "Good heavens, Bobs, don't!" "Not just the place to discuss our stormy past," she laughed. Some one demanded tea, so Jerry escaped. He felt as if he had spent the afternoon gathering information about Jane, focussing his entire attention upon her. He had discovered his wife to be a strange and rather powerful personality, reacting on all the people about her, including himself. He did an odd thing, then. He could not have explained the impulse to himself. But he left the party and walked upstairs into the nursery, where Mrs. Biggs guarded his son. The baby was awake, and Jerry sat down beside him, staring into his face, trying to penetrate through him, into the depths of that opaque being who was his mother. CHAPTER XXIV Jerry's awakening to Jane, as a personality to be coped with, brought with it a trail of perplexities. He had taken her for granted for so long that it was uncomfortable to get re-adjusted to her. He found himself gazing at her, when they were together, as at some stranger. "Jerry, is anything the matter with me?" she asked one evening, finally aware of this scrutiny. "No, of course not; why?" "I find you staring at me so strangely all the time I'm with you. It makes me self-conscious." "I beg your pardon." "Is there something you want to ask me?" "Has it ever occurred to you that we knew nothing at all about each other when we married?" "Yes. That was one of the nicest things about us. We took each other for what we were, at the time, and asked no tiresome questions." "Haven't you any curiosity about my past, Jane?" "No. I married your present; I'm not concerned with anything else." "That isn't a bit feminine." "Then it must be masculine, so we agree on the stupidity of historic autobiography." "I'm beginning to be interested in your past, Jane." "Very masculine!" she retorted. "No use, Jerry; it's over and done with. I'm not even interested in it myself." "Communicativeness is not a vice with you, I may say." "That was why you married me, if you remember. You spoke of it specially the day of the wedding. I warned you then that 'the Man with the Dumb Wife' had a bad time of it, both while she was dumb and when she was not!" "A reasonable amount of confidence between husband and wife is desirable, don't you think so?" "I can't say that I do. Who is to decide what is a reasonable amount--the confidant or the confider? No one can be trusted to say just enough; I like reserve better, myself."