“Why, Bertram, I just love to go to meet you,” she maintained indignantly. Then, remembering just in time, she amended: “That is, I did love to meet you, until--” With a sudden realization that she certainly had not helped matters any, she came to an embarrassed pause. A puzzled frown showed on Bertram's face. “You did love to meet me until--” he repeated after her; then his face changed. “Billy, you aren't--you _can't_ be laying up last night against me!” he reproached her a little irritably. “Last night? Why, of course not,” retorted Billy, in a panic at the bare mention of the “test” which--according to “When the Honeymoon Wanes”--was at the root of all her misery. Already she thought she detected in Bertram's voice signs that he was beginning to chafe against those “bonds.” “It is a matter of--of the utmost indifference to me what time you come home at night, my dear,” she finished airily, as she sat down to her work again. Bertram stared; then he frowned, turned on his heel and left the room. Bertram, who knew nothing of the “Talk to Young Wives” in the newspaper at Billy's feet, was surprised, puzzled, and just a bit angry. Billy, left alone, jabbed her pen with such force against her paper that the note she was making became an unsightly blot. “Well, if this is what that man calls being 'comfortably indifferent,' I'd hate to try the _un_comfortable kind,” she muttered with emphasis. CHAPTER IX. THE DINNER BILLY TRIED TO GET Notwithstanding what Billy was disposed to regard as the non-success of her first attempt to profit by the “Talk to Young Wives;” she still frantically tried to avert the waning of her honeymoon. Assiduously she cultivated the prescribed “indifference,” and with at least apparent enthusiasm she sought the much-to-be-desired “outside interests.” That is, she did all this when she thought of it when something reminded her of the sword of destruction hanging over her happiness. At other times, when she was just being happy without question, she was her old self impulsive, affectionate, and altogether adorable.