This day was a criterion of all her days. She was very busy. She expected to find time for her music, and to read a little. She must keep up with what was going on for George’s sake, so that she would be an intelligent companion for him. But she never found time; besides, George cared less than she had supposed for music, and he was strangely indifferent to intelligent conversation, seeing what an intelligent man he was. Sometimes she returned a few calls, merely from a sense of duty. She was never lonely. Sometimes her mother came to lunch and spent the afternoon. On Sundays they went to church and had dinner with George’s father and mother. As the months passed, Mrs. Cutter frequently asked her how she “felt.” She always felt well and told her so. She did not notice that Mrs. Cutter took little pleasure in her abounding health. The spring and summer passed. She was very busy in her garden among the flowers. One day Mrs. Adams warned her against taking so much violent exercise. “But why?” Helen asked, standing up with a trowel in her hand, radiantly flushed. Mrs. Adams said nothing. She merely measured her daughter this way and that with a sort of tape-line gaze. “I like working out here, and I am perfectly well,” Helen insisted. “A married woman never knows when she is perfectly well. It is your duty to be careful,” was the reply. Helen flushed and remained silent. She felt that her mother was staring at her inquisitively through this silence as she had sometimes seen her peep through the drawn curtains before a window to satisfy her curiosity or her anxiety. When at last Mrs. Adams took her departure, Helen went in, closed the door of her room and sat down on the side of her bed. I do not know how it is with men, but there are thoughts a woman cannot think if the door is open, even if there is not another soul in the house. Helen was now engaged in this sort of secret-prayer contemplation of herself, a slim, pretty figure, sitting with her knees crossed, hands folded, lips parted, eyes fixed in a long blue gaze upon the clean white walls of this room.