"Bridgie is Bridgie, and I'm myself; we were born different. It's not fair to compare us, and the advantages are not all on one side. If she has not had my opportunities, she has escaped the temptations; she might have grown selfish too. Sometimes I hate money, Geoffrey; it's a millstone round one's neck." "No!" Geoffrey squared his shoulders. "It's a lever. I am glad to be rich; my father worked hard for his money--it was honourably gained, and I'm proud to inherit it. It is a responsibility, a heavy one, if you like, but one is bound to have responsibilities in life, and it's a fine thing to have one which holds such possibilities. I mean to bring up the boys to take that view. But--" he paused heavily--"I'd give it up to-morrow if it could purchase peace and tranquillity, a rest from this everlasting strain!" Something tightened over Joan's heart; a chill as of fear passed through her blood. Geoffrey spoke quietly, so sanely, with an unmistakable air of knowing his own mind. And his manner was so cool, so detached, not one lover-like word or action had he vouchsafed in answer to her own. A chill passed through Joan's veins, the chill of dismay which presages disaster. At that moment she divined the certainty of what she had never before even dimly imagined--the waning of her husband's love. Like too many beautiful young wives, she had taken for granted that her place in her husband's heart was established for life, independent of any effort to retain it. She had not realised that love is a treasure which must needs be guarded with jealous care, that the delicate cord may be strained so thin that a moment may come when it reaches breaking-point. That moment had not come yet; surely, surely, it could not have come, but she felt the shadow. "Don't you love me any more, Geoffrey?" she asked faintly. "In spite of all my faults, do you love me still like you did?" It was the inevitable ending to a dissension, the inevitable question which he had answered a hundred times, and if to-day there was a new tone in the voice which spoke it, Geoffrey was not sensitive enough to notice. Few men would mark such differences in a moment of tension. "I love you, Joan," he answered wearily. "You are my wife; but you've rubbed off the bloom!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Joan got up quietly from her knees and crossed to the door. The voice within declared that Geoffrey would call her back, that he would leap after her and clasp her in his arms, as he had done a score of times in like circumstances, that he would implore forgiveness for his cruel words. She walked slowly, pausing as she went to put a chair against the wall, to alter the position of a vase of flowers. She reached the door and cast a swift glance behind. Geoffrey had gone back to his writing; his pen travelled swiftly across the page; he did not raise his head. CHAPTER TEN. PIXIE GIVES JOAN A TONIC.