The wine dulled Gay's appetite and Trudy's had been taken quite away by Beatrice's proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what she should wear for the O'Valley dinner party and Gaylord figured how much money he needed before he would dare try buying an automobile, and they finished the evening by attending the nine-o'clock movie performance and buying fifteen cents' worth of lemon ice and two sponge cakes to bring home as a piece de resistance. * * * * * Beatrice found herself amused instead of annoyed as she climbed the stairs to the Vondeplosshe residence. At Trudy's request Gay had discreetly consented to be absent. He had pretty well picked up the threads of his various enterprises and what with his club duties, his second-rate concerts, his gambling, and commissions from antique dealers, he managed to put in what he termed a full day. So he swung out of the house early in the afternoon to buy himself a new winter outfit, wondering if Trudy would row when she discovered the fact. Gaylord's theory of married life was "What's mine is my own, and what's yours is mine." He relied on Trudy to mend his clothes and make his neckties, keep house and manage with a laundress a half day a week, yet always be as well dressed and pretty as when she had slacked in the office and boarded without cares at Mary's house. She must always seem happy and proud of her husband and have her old pep--being on the lookout for a way to make their fortunes. She must also remain as young looking as ever and always be at his beck and call. Gaylord was rapidly developing into an impossible little bully, the usual result of an impoverished snob who manages to become a barnacle-like fixture on someone a trifle more foolish yet better of nature than himself. Had he been less aristocratic of family and stronger of brawn he would have beaten Trudy if she displeased him. As it was, after the first flush of romance passed, he began to sneer at her in private when she made mistakes in the ways of the smart set into which Gaylord had been born, and when she protested he only sneered the louder. He felt Trudy should be eternally grateful to him. Trudy found herself bewildered, hurt--yet unable to combat his contemptible little laughs and sneers. Trudy was shallow and she knew not the meaning of the word "ideal," but for the most part she was rather amiable and unless she had a certain goal to attain she wished everyone about her to be happy and content. As she had married Gaylord only as a stepping-stone she was fair enough to remind herself of this fact when unpleasant developments occurred. As long as he was useful to her she was not going to seize upon pin-pricks and try to make them into actual wounds.