"Shall you take your porch and your doors with you?" he asked, with a sorry smile. "They cost enough to be worth considering." "No," she answered, with the simple literalness that builds a stone wall in a moment. "We shouldn't need them in an apartment-house." "That's the idea, is it?" "Yes, it strikes me that that would be the best thing all around--an apartment-house, with a cafe or something. Lots of nice people live that way now. Look at Cecilia Ingles's cousin; she is invited everywhere, and she entertains just the same as if she was in her own house. It's too hard work for me to run things like this, and I've just got to get farther away from this miserable lake." "There's all the furniture." "We could use some of it." "And store the rest?" "Yes--or auction it." "Small profit in either. What are you going to do with the lease? Store it, or auction it, or use it for furnishing?" Her lip quivered sensitively. "Why, I supposed--" "Yes, we _can_ sublet the house--if anybody is found to take it. There was something of a wait before _we_ took it. There might be another." "There's that Mrs. Cass--" "I don't know how much she could do in three weeks--a good many people are fixed by this time. Two weeks sooner would have made some difference. I couldn't very well afford to carry the house all through the summer. There's a bottom to our pocket-book, and we are getting to it faster than you think." This was a figure of speech that called for no direct response. For-- "Well," she went on, "that's my idea: a flat, with our meals. This would give me my chance to get away for a part of the summer--I'm sure I need it." "Away for a part of the summer?" "Yes. Mary Munson was saying something about my going to the White Mountains with her in July. They would do me good. Though perhaps the sea-shore might be better; plenty of those Down-east people are indebted to me now." Another of those gauze veils was lifting. Married life was but a prolongation of girlhood, with all its associations and peregrinations. Where did the husband come in? They left the house on the first of May. George recognized by this time the essential slightness and incapacity of his wife, and renounced the possibility of a home in any but a modified sense. Part of their goods were sacrificed at auction, part were stored at a rate that would have provided a home for a working-man's family, a few pieces were utilized in filling up a partly furnished flat, and the deserted house remained vacant through the summer. It was not until October that its ornate front and its tasteful decorations caught the eye of the right man, and by October a complication of interests had made a vacant house the very least of Ogden's concerns.