“She’s afraid we’ll become commonplace married people,” she said, “but we won’t, will we?” There, at the start, it had begun. Discussion when there should have been no discussion--feelings pried into. How he hated college women. It should be prohibited somehow--these girls getting together and talking about things. Forming these alliances. All along the line, for six years, and this was the first time he’d even met her, this Margaret had been held up to him. Margaret’s letters had come and with each of them would sweep over Helen that fear that she was becoming dull--sliding backward--those little reactions against him--those pull-backs. At the time Bennett was born the same thing had happened. First the natural beauty, then that fear of being swept under by “domesticity.” The way they used the word as if it were a shame, a disgrace. He felt he had never told Helen the half he felt about these things. And now that rotten oath had put him in the wrong. He’d have to apologize. He’d have to begin with an apology and there he would be put in the entire wrong again. It wasn’t as if women didn’t have to be handled like children anyhow. They did. What could you do with them when they got into moods except coax them out of it? There was Helen upstairs now, probably hating him--wishing she were free--envying that spinster friend of hers. His thoughts took a sudden turn. She couldn’t quite wish that. Surely she didn’t want not to be married to him. She’d never said anything like that. He didn’t really think she had ever for a minute wished it. She was crazy about Bennett and Peggy. She loved him too. On that thought he went upstairs, his apology on his lips, his mind tangled, but his need of peace with Helen very great. CHAPTER II FREDA Freda met her father on the street three blocks from home. She saw him coming, laden as usual with books, a package of papers from the psychology class to correct--and the meat. The collar of his ulster was turned up around his ears but Freda knew him even in the gathering twilight, a block away. There was a dependency about Eric Thorstad’s figure--about the meat--that was part of her life. “Liver or veal?” she asked gayly, taking the fat package from under his arm. “It’s a secret.” “Sausage,” she said, “I can tell by the feel and the smell.” “Aren’t you late, Freda?” “I went to the movies.” “Again? I wish you wouldn’t go so often. What do you get out of them?” “Thrills, father dear.” “All unreal.” She skipped into a stride that matched his. “A thrill is a shiver of romance,” she declared, “it’s never unreal.” “And what gives the shiver? The white sheet?” “I’m open minded. Could be a well tailored garden, Nazimova’s gown, a murder on a mountain.” He laughed and they went along briskly until they came to the third in a row of small yellow frame houses, and turned in at the scrap of cement walk which led up to the porch. In the kitchen Mrs. Thorstad turned from the stove to kiss them both.