How she tried my patience! I was mad to have the preliminaries over, to have the divorce under way--mad, not with the hysterical impatience of those short-sighted people who mess their purposes through lack of self-restraint, but with the white-hot repressed patience of those who have their way in this world. Day followed day, and she did not speak. I gave up the evenings and a large part of the afternoons to her. I stayed on after dinner until there was no further excuse for lingering. I listened to her interminable recital of fashionable names, dates, gossip, adventure. A week of this, and just as my fortitude was wearing itself out and I had begun to debate opening the subject myself, she said: “I’ve been down looking at our house. Really it’s not half bad. Why shouldn’t we open it?” I did not know what to say. Was I mistaken in her purpose in coming? Or was this proposal to open the house the clever move of a clever gamester to force me to speak first? “This lovely weather!” she went on. “It’s a shame such a climate should be wasted upon such a vulgar city. When I think of the dreadful rains that infest Paris and the rains and fogs of London-- How they would glory in this sun and sparkling air.” To my notion New York was vastly more attractive than dreary London or rainy, sloppy Paris. But I made no defense of New York. I wished her to think it crude and tiresome. “And the fashionable society here,” she went on. “What a silly copy of the real thing over there!” “It must remind you of Passaic,” said I. She visibly shivered. I was suddenly seized of a base inspiration. In my despair I did not hesitate. Said I: “That reminds me. We must go over to see the old people.” “Oh, yes,” she murmured. “I’m so neglectful.” I felt--I saw--that I was on the right track at last. “When will you go?” I persisted. “Next Sunday?” “Perhaps,” said she faintly. “Yes, we’ll go Sunday. They fret because you never write.” “They are well?” “In splendid health. There’s no reason why all four of them shouldn’t outlive us.” “You--you go often?” she faltered. “I haven’t been for some time,” said I. “You see, I’ve been away.... If we opened the house, we could have them visit us. That would make up to them for the way we’ve acted.” She gazed at me in large-eyed horror. Suddenly she smiled with patient scorn and shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I had forgotten your passion for jesting.” “I am in earnest,” said I--and I was indeed in the full flood of a virtuous penitence whose hypocrisy I did not detect until I was thinking about the matter afterwards. You, gentle reader, would in the same circumstances never have permitted yourself to discover the hypocrisy. I went on: “I’m ashamed of the way I’ve acted.” “They’ve got everything they need or want,” said Edna. “Material comfort,” replied I. “But haven’t parents a right to expect something more? And now that our social position is secure, we’ve no excuse for acting snobbishly.”