Two moods possessed him alternately: in the one he despised himself as an austere person, in whom an undue restraint of upbringing had dammed the stream of youth, so that it lay alone and unruffled as a mountain-tarn; in the other he saw himself as a man with a chivalrous duty. Little by little he came to see that her faery lightheartedness, her faculty for taking no thought for the morrow, made her an easy prey for the morrow. Her ease in acquiring new friendships made friendship of small value. Her butterfly Sittings from pleasure to pleasure left her without garnerings. She lived, he calculated, at the rate of at least five thousand dollars per annum. But different people paid for it; she contributed as her share her gay well-dressed schoolgirl self. The chances were that she rarely had a five-dollar bill in her purse, and yet she was accustoming herself to extravagance. He began to watch her friends. When he ran over the list of them, he found that they were all temporary, held by the flimsiest bonds of common knowledge. They had been met at hotels, in pensions, on transatlantic voyages. A good many of them were divorced or unattached persons. They were all on the wing; none of them seemed to comply with any settled code of morals. The more he saw of her, the more aghast he became at the precariousness of her prosperity. Some day these friends, who could dispense with her for months together, would happen all to dispense with her at the same moment Then the telephone, which was her wizard summons to dinners, balls, and motor-parties, would suddenly grow silent. She would wait and listen; and listen and wait; her round of gayeties would be ended. Perhaps this thirst for the insubstantial things of life was a part of the price which Hal had mentioned. Did she know it? Winged creature as she was, she must covet the security of a nest sometimes, though, while she was without it, she affected to despise it as dullness. When he married her---- He became lost in thought If they went on living as they were living now, his career would be torn to shreds by her unsatisfied energy. They would have to settle down. In putting up with any irritations that might result, he’d be helping her to pay the penalty--the penalty which Vashti had imposed on so many lives--on her own most of all--by her early selfishness. Towering above his passion and mingling with it oddly, was the great determination to save her from the ruinous lightness to which her mother’s undefined social position had committed her. She was fully aware of the unspoken strictures which lent melancholy to his ardor. “You think I’m a silly little moth. I know you do. I’m pyschic. You think I’m fluttering about a candle and that my wings’ll get scorched. Just you wait. I’ll have to show you.”