Except in occasional outbursts when her rude candor toward me would anger me into retort in kind, I concealed my feeling about her. I knew it was just, yet I was ashamed of it. Our quarrels were all surface affairs--outbursts of irritation--the blowing off of surplus steam, not the bursting of the boiler and the wrecking of the machinery. If you happen to take into your employ any of the servants we had in those days--Edna’s maids or my valet or any other of the menials so placed that they could spy upon our innermost privacy--I am confident that in return for your adroit, searching questionings you will hear we were no more inharmonious than the usual married couple past the best-foot-foremost stage. I did not swear at her; she did not throw bric-à-brac at me. And once, I remember, when I had a bad headache she stayed home from the opera--on a Monday night, too--to read to me. It is true the new dress in which she had expected to show herself was not ready. But that is a detail for a cynic to linger upon. Three months of New York, and she was bored to extinction. I had confidently been expecting this. I watched the signs of it with gnawing anxiety, for I was very near to the end of my good behavior. If possible I wished to stay on and help her toward a rational frame of mind--one in which she would see that divorce was the only possible solution of our impossible situation. But I began to fear I should have to give up and fly--to hunt or to inspect western mines and railways. She was bored by the women; they seemed shallow dabblers in culture after the European women. She was offended by their nervousness about their position; it made them seem common in contrast with the Europeans, born swells and impregnably ensconced. She was bored by the men--by their fewness, by the insufferable dullness of those few--all of them feeble imitations of the European type of elegant loafer. “These men have no subtlety,” she cried. “They have no conversation. When they’re alone with a woman--you should hear them try to flatter. They are as different from the European men as--as----” “As a fence-painter from an artist,” I suggested. “Quite that,” said she, and I saw her making a mental note of the comparison for future use--one of her best tricks. “Really, I prefer the business men to them. But one cannot get the business men. What a country, where everyone who has any brains is at work!” “If you are unhappy here, why not go abroad?” said I amiably. “Margot is always waiting for you.” “But how _can_ I go abroad?” railed she. “There’ll be another outbreak of scandal. Was ever a woman so wretchedly placed! What _shall_ I do! If I had some one to advise me!”