Her girlish romance about Walter seemed to her now almost as empty as her affair with Harry Klein. She had at first given herself to Isadore on a rather intellectual basis. She knew him profoundly before she had married him. She had been quite sure of a life of loving comradeship and mutual understanding. From a matter of fact, work-a-day point of view the marriage was to be as satisfactory as she could imagine. And to all this had been added an unexpected element--this mystic, unexpressible joy of sex. Yetta had the sense to know that she was fortunate above most women. She looked up at the dear face above her, hoping to find some gesture to express the overflowing happiness for which she could find no words. She was struck by the look of intense thought on his face. "What are you thinking about, Ib?" He started, as he came back from his revery. "I've been thinking," he said, "that we'll have to be awfully tactful when we get back to the office. Smith and Levine have been running things so long by themselves that it's only human for them to be a bit jealous about our coming back." These words caused a very complicated mix-up in Yetta's mind. The hereditary woman in her, the part of her which was formed by the myriad wives who had been her ancestors, shuddered as though under the lash at the idea that on this very last day his thoughts had gone so far away. Every cell in her brain had been intent on him. She had just decided that no one had ever loved any one as much as she loved him--and he had been thinking of the office. A tidal wave of tears started instinctively towards her eyes. But all that was modern about Yetta, all that part of her which had learned to reason, was suffused with tenderness, as the other part of her would have been by a caress. She was proud of the single-minded devotion of her man. She was not surprised at the tangent along which his thoughts had flown. She had the immense advantage over most brides, that she knew her husband. She knew the depth of sincerity which was sometimes obscured by his pedantic phrases. She had learned to love _him_. She had been spared the pain of discovering a reality back of a dream of love. The only new thing she had learned about him since their marriage was the wealth of tenderness back of his rather rough exterior,--the gentle consideration that lay under his rugged manners,--the undreamed-of sweetness which was hidden to most eyes by his evident force. She was not disillusioned by intimacy. For a few minutes she let him talk about the work that was awaiting them. She was as much interested in it as he. But at last the hereditary woman within her reminded her that after all this was their last day of solitude. She stopped listening to him and considered the matter from this point of view for a moment. Then she shamelessly interrupted him in the midst of a ponderous sentence. "Ib," she said, "I love you."