whims, her fads, quarrel with her if necessary. If she must run to her conventions, let her go. And let him coarsen his feeling so it was willing to take what was left of her. He wiped his forehead impatiently. It was damp and that sign of his intensity shamed him. He had learned that the revealing of emotion was man’s shame, to be hidden at all costs. Helen had given him a final lesson in that. Angrily he flung himself into his work, concentrating actually with his will for hours, mastering the intricacies of the question on which he must give an opinion in the morning. When he had done his notes lay ready. He cleaned up the litter of papers, a little frown on his face and looked at his watch. Nearly midnight. He must go home. All the practical machinery of locking up, starting the car, steering, driving into the garage, locking the garage, turning out the lights in the library. Nothing was different from other nights. He was a man in his own house. But over the formalism of his actions and his deliberate definiteness of conscious thought his mind was in battle. He was trying to kill the part of him that cried out against going to his wife in such a mood. He was trying deliberately to kill it with a blunt edged thought which read “Be a man--not a neurasthenic.” He cursed himself under his breath. He was no damned temperamental actor to carry on like this (Always, always, that choking necessity for repressing these feelings, concealing the fact of feeling). A married man--seven years--rights--duties--nature--foolish whims--but above that persisted the almost tortured cry of his spirit, struggling with the hotness of desire, begging, for its life--“Don’t go home like a beast to her!” III In the morning Helen was again worried by his appearance. “What time did you come in, Gage?” “About midnight.” “You look as if you’d slept wretchedly. Did you?” “Well, enough.” His tone was surly. He could not bear to look at her, shining haired, head held high, confidence, strength, balance of mind, justice, radiating from her. He knew what a contrast he made--she did not need to tell him of his heavy, encircled eyes, his depressed mouth. She pushed his hair back from his forehead, standing beside his chair. It was a familiar gesture between them. “Gage, you mean more than anything else to me. You know that?” He mumbled an answer. “But don’t resent it so awfully because I can’t believe that loving is a woman’s only job. We mustn’t absorb each other.” Quoted, he thought bitterly, from Margaret Duffield. Quite reasonable too. Very reasonable. He suddenly hated her for her reasoning which was denied to his struggling instincts. All desire, all love in his heart had curdled to a sodden lump of resentment. He picked up the paper. There was Helen, marching across the page, smiling into the camera’s eyes. Curious men with hats and crowding women showed in the blurred background. He looked from the picture to the real Helen. “Very good picture.”