"You are so provoking. Why won't you be serious?" "Serious? I never was more serious in my life. Suppose I tell you I think of her all the time?" He looked at her keenly, then broke into a laugh as he read her delight in the speech. "Don't you think I am competent to attend to my own affairs, even if Louise Caldwell is the soft and unsophisticated creature you would make her? I am glad you did not feel it necessary to caution me about her husband?" His eyes gave a flash. Mrs. Nailor hastened to put herself right--that is, on the side of the one present, for with her the absent was always in the wrong. Wickersham improved his opportunities with the ability of a veteran. Little by little he excited Mrs. Wentworth's jealousy. Norman, he said, necessarily saw a great deal of Alice Lancaster, for he was her business agent. It was, perhaps, not necessary for him to see her every day, but it was natural that he should. The arrow stuck and rankled. And later, at an entertainment, when she saw Norman laughing and enjoying himself in a group of old friends, among whom was Alice Lancaster, Mrs. Norman was on fire with suspicion, and her attitude toward Alice Lancaster changed. So, before Norman was aware of it, he found life completely changed for him. As a boatman on a strange shore in the night-time drifts without knowing of it, he, in the absorption of his business, drifted away from his old relation without marking the process. His wife had her life and friends, and he had his. He made at times an effort to recover the old relation, but she was too firmly held in the grip of the life she had chosen for him to get her back. His wife complained that he was out of sympathy with her, and he could not deny it. She resented this, and charged him with neglecting her. No man will stand such a charge, and Norman defended himself hotly. "I do not think it lies in your mouth to make such a charge," he said, with a flash in his eye. "I am nearly always at home when I am not necessarily absent. You can hardly say as much. I do not think my worst enemy would charge me with that. Even Ferdy Wickersham would not say that." She fired at the name. "You are always attacking my friends," she declared. "I think they are quite as good as yours." Norman turned away. He looked gloomily out of the window for a moment, and then faced his wife again. "Louise," he said gravely, "if I have been hard and unsympathetic, I have not meant to be. Why can't we start all over again? You are more than all the rest of the world to me. I will give up whatever you object to, and you give up what I object to. That is a good way to begin." His eyes had a look of longing in them, but Mrs. Wentworth did not respond. "You will insist on my giving up my friends," she said.