"Let us take a turn in the garden, Peter," she smiled at him; and although he understood, with the fatal clearness that one year of life with Alicia had given him, that the walk was only proposed as a slight to Mary, he felt the old pleasure in her beauty--a rather sickly, pallid pleasure--and an inner qualm was dispersed by the realization that he and Mary understood one another so well that there need be no fear of hurting her. After one year of married life, he and Mary knew the nearness of the sympathy that allows itself no words. There seemed to Odd a perverse pathos in Alicia's lonely complacency--a pathos emphasized by her indifferent unconsciousness. "Mary is so disagreeable to-day," said Alicia, as they walked slowly across the lawn. "She has such a strong sense of her own worth and of other people's worthlessness." Odd made no reply. He never said a harsh word to his wife. He had chosen to marry her. The man who would wreak his own disillusion on the woman he had made his wife must, thought Odd, be a sorry wretch. He met the revealment of Alicia's shallow selfishness with humorous gentleness. She had been shallow and selfish when he had married her, and he had not found it out--had not cared to find it out. He contemplated these characteristics now with philosophic, even scientific charity. She was born so. "It will be dull enough here, at all events," Alicia went on, pressing her slim patent-leather shoe into the turf with lazy emphasis as she walked, for Alicia was not bad-tempered, and took things easily; "but if Mary is going to be disagreeable--" "You know, Alicia, that Mary has always lived here. It is in a truer sense her home than mine, but she would go directly if either you or she found it disagreeable. Had you not assented so cordially she would never have stayed." "Don't imply extravagant things, Peter. Who thinks of her going?" "She would--if _you_ made it disagreeable." "I? I do nothing. Surely Mary won't want to go because she scolds me." "Come, Ally, surely you don't get scolded--more than is good for you." Odd smiled down at her. Her burnished head was on a level with his eyes. "Like everybody else, you are not perfection, and, as Mary is somewhat of a disciplinarian, you ought to take her lectures in a humble spirit, and be thankful. I do. Mary is so much nearer perfection than I am." "I am afraid I shall be bored here, Peter." Alicia left the subject of Mary for a still more intimate grievance. "The art of not being bored requires patience, not to say genius. It can be learned though. And there are worse things than being bored." "I think I could bear anything better." "What would you like, Ally?" Odd's voice held a certain hopefulness. "I'll do anything I can, you know. I believe in a woman's individuality and all that. Does your life down here crush your individuality, Alicia?" Again Odd smiled down at her, conscious of an inward bitterness.