She knows that her novel has not ended with the marriage hells, that, in fact, the plot is only just beginning as far as she is concerned. But she does not allow herself to think of that. She revels in romantic fiction, and reads novel after novel at the rate of three a week. Occasionally one of these novels gives her a nasty shock, for it deals with realism rather than romance, and reveals the hearts of women rather like herself, and the tragedies of women rather like herself, and the truth of things, in a cold, white light. She reads the book with burning eyes. It makes her pulse beat. It seems rather a wicked book, it is so horribly truthful, not covering even the nakedness of facts with a decent layer of sentiment, but exposing them brutally, with a terrible candor. She hates the book. It makes her think of things she has tried to forget. It revives those queer doubts, and makes her conscience prick again. She is glad when she has sent it back to the library and taken out another novel, of the harmless kind, in the old style. She lulls her conscience to sleep by the dear old love-stories, or by the musical comedies and the costume-plays to which she goes with one of her girl-friends on Wednesday or Saturday matinées. She goes to the theatre a good deal now, because she is living more independently of her husband. That is to say she no longer waits for his home-coming, as in her first days of marriage, with an impatient desire. She has long seen that they cannot be all in all to each other, sharing all pleasures, or having none. He has realized that, too, and goes to his club at least once a week--sometimes more often, to enjoy the society of men, to get a little “Bohemianism,” as he calls it. She has made her own circle of friends now, the young wives of men like her husband, and many of her afternoons are taken up with little rounds of visits, when she is amused by the tittle-tattle of these wives, by their little tales and scandals, by their gossips about servants, frocks and theatres. She, too, has social ambitions like her husband. Her evenings At Home are agreeable adventures when she is pleased with the homage of her husband’s friends. She takes some trouble with her little dinner-parties and writes out the _menus_ with a good deal of care, and arranges the flowers, and occasionally looks into the kitchen to give a word to the cook. She wears her new evening gown and smiles at her husband’s compliments, with something of her old tenderness. After one of these evening At Homes the husband and wife have moments of loving comradeship like those in the first days of their marriage. It is a pity that some trivial accident or dispute causes ill-temper at the breakfast-table.