Tanqueray was realizing more and more that he was married, and that his marriage had been made in that heaven where the spirit of creative comedy abides. In spite of the superb sincerity of his indifference, he found it increasingly difficult to ignore his wife. It had, in fact, become impossible now that people no longer ignored _him_. Rose, as the wife of an obscurity, could very easily be kept obscure. But, by a peculiar irony, as Tanqueray's genius became recognized, Rose, though not exactly recognized in any social sense, undoubtedly tended to appear. Tanqueray might dine "out" without her (he frequently did), but when it came to asking people back again she was bound to be in evidence. Not that he allowed himself to tread the ruinous round. He still kept people at arm's length. Only people were more agreeably disposed towards George Tanqueray recognized than they had been towards George Tanqueray obscure, and he in consequence was more agreeably disposed towards them. Having made it clearly understood that he would not receive people, that he barred himself against all intrusions and approaches, occasionally, at the length of his arm, he did receive them. And they immediately became aware of Rose. That did not matter, considering how little _they_ mattered. The nuisance of it was that he thus became aware of her himself. Rose at the head of his table, so conspicuously and yet so fortuitously his wife, emphasizing her position by her struggles to sustain it, Rose with her embarrassments and solecisms, with her lost innocence in the matter of her aspirates, agonized now by their terrified flight and by her own fluttering efforts at recapture, Rose was not a person that anybody could ignore, least of all her husband. As long as she had remained a servant in his house he had been unaware of her, or aware of her only as a presence beneficent, invisible, inaudible. Here again his celebrity, such as it was, had cursed him. The increase in Tanqueray's income, by enabling them to keep a servant, had the effect of throwing Rose adrift about the house. As the mistress of it, with a maid under her, she was not quite so invisible, nor yet so inaudible as she had been.