George Cutter had outgrown Shannon. Shannon might be proud of him, but it could not be intimate with him. He did not belong there. He was a big town man. You could almost smell Wall Street as he passed you, Williams Street, anyhow, which is only one of the elbows of Wall Street--a notable perfume, I can tell you, of pop-eyed dollars and busy bonds that never rested, but were always being sold again. Seeing George thus, enhanced by ten additional years, you naturally want to know what changes have taken place in Helen. Sometimes a slender, fair woman might be seen in Cutter’s limousine, waiting at the curb before the bank. But if you saw her, you scarcely noticed her, because there was nothing distinguishing in her appearance. She always sat very still with her hands folded, her lips closed so tightly that they appeared to be primped, and with her eyes wide open, very blue like curtains drawn before windows, concealing every thought and feeling within. When Cutter came through the door of the bank, stepped quickly forward and swung himself into this car with the air of a man who has not a moment to spare, she always drew a trifle closer into her corner of the seat. Then they slid away noiselessly across the square and out Wiggs Street. Even the chauffeur knew that Mr. Cutter never had a moment to spare and invariably exceeded the speed limit. No word of greeting was exchanged between this husband and wife--not even a look. She did not so much as unpurse her lips to smile. His arrogant silence implied that he was alone in this car. Yet we must know that it was his wish she should come for him, since she so often did come and wait for him with this look of dutiful patience. The married relation is not vocative. It tends toward silence and a sort of dreary neutrality, arrived at by years of mutual defeats. It is easier for a man to be agreeable to another woman who is not his wife for the simple reason that he is innocent of this stranger. She knows none of his faults and she has not failed him in anything. And every woman knows that she is instinctively more entertaining to a man who is not her husband, even if she despises this man and truly, patiently loves her husband, because she is under no bond to agree with him nor to avoid his prejudices. There is nothing accusative or immoral in this fact, any more than there is in a momentary change of thought. It is perfectly natural, when you consider how many years they must dwell upon the same common sense of each other. If the weather was fine, Cutter only stopped long enough to drop Helen at the house. He might tell her he would be late for dinner or he might be late without telling her. Then he was driven at the same spanking, glittering speed to the golf and country club for a foursome previously arranged.