She never seemed to attack that decision squarely. She seemed to try to deny it a right to confront her. And yet, definitely, constantly, with less impatience than a younger lover and vastly more skill than a less intellectual one, Carpenter made himself felt. Now and then in their discussions and in their arguments, he destroyed some reason against their marriage. Her defenses had been made very weak. She had no argument against the lack of liberty in marriage which he could not destroy. He would grant anything. Indeed he asked only for the simplest, most unadorned marriage bond--and companionship which she had admitted she enjoyed with him. She might retain her own name if she liked without any altercation--might leave him for months at a time--he let her frighten him with no such threats. He offered too, more leisure for thought than she had ever had in the pressure of earning her own living. She had told him a little of what it meant to always need all the money she had in the bank--to do many things and yet never have any feeling of ease, to fear dependency. “It would mean a charitable hospital or going to a remote little Pennsylvania town to an aunt who lived with my mother until she died and who lives on in the almost worthless little place where I was born.” When she told Walter that, he had almost won her, so absorbed were they both in the pity and dread of her loneliness. Then again there leapt between them some deep-rooted fear, some instinct, some dread pulling Margaret back to her little island of celibacy. It was far from an unpleasant, bickering companionship that they had. Margaret, at thirty, past all the desires of adolescence, informed without experience, had given Gregory nothing and had only been disturbed and made nervous by him, even while she appreciated his fine fire and ardors. Carpenter satisfied, soothed her. They had the same shynesses, the same dread of absurdities in themselves. And Margaret was afraid that she might be lonely without him and that too worried her. She did not want to be lonely for any one. So she told him and he laughed and ventured to bring her hand to his lips and hold it there. She did not draw it away, perhaps because she was reasonable, perhaps because she was not. To-night he talked of Gage, reflecting the gossip of the men of Gage’s acquaintance. With them the fact of the severing of the firm of Sable and Flandon was a subject of much speculation. Walter was worried about it, in his own quiet fashion. Gage and Helen were both his close friends. “Talking won’t do any good,” advised Margaret. “Talking never did do any good with a man. It drives him into himself, and that’s usually unhealthy. I mean the sort of talking which is full of advice, of course--or of prohibition.” “Yet some of you ought to do something with Gage Flandon before he goes straight to pieces.” Margaret said nothing of what had happened that afternoon.