Somehow his meeting with the girl had saddened him oddly. There was something rather pathetic about Toni at this moment of her existence, though it would have been hard to say exactly wherein the pathos lay. In spite of himself Herrick was haunted by the little picture she had drawn of her life with Owen Rose. He could fancy the two sitting together at night in the lamp-lit drawing-room, the man writing, or trying to write, as though alone, the young wife sitting silently by doing nothing, or playing quiet little games with her dog to relieve the monotony of an evening uncheered by any interesting book or engrossing study. A worker himself, Herrick knew very well the deadening influence exerted by an unoccupied companion during working hours; and the fact that Toni did not care for books, and confessed to non-comprehension of her husband's work, struck Herrick as unfortunate, to say the least. To this man, forced by circumstance into a more or less secluded state of life, Toni's lack of social experience weighed very lightly. She had not, perhaps, the manner or style of the girls one met in Mayfair or Belgravia, but she was simple and natural and unaffected; and Herrick found himself hoping that Mr. Rose knew how to value the traits of simplicity and straightforwardness at their true worth. Then it was possible that the marriage might be a success in spite of the evident disparity of tastes between the two; but remembering Barry's gloomy forebodings, Herrick was bound to admit that the prospect of happiness seemed rather doubtful. At present, however, he could do nothing; and with a resolve to call at Greenriver at the first available opportunity he went back into his little bungalow, which seemed strangely lonely as the twilight fell over the river-banks. CHAPTER XII As the summer glided by, in a succession of golden, cloudless days, Owen began to ask himself, rather drearily, whether his marriage was going to turn out a success or an irretrievable failure. When once the novelty of Toni's companionship had worn off, when he had grown used to her pretty, childish ways, accustomed to the sense of youth and light-hearted joy which she diffused about the old house, he began to find, to his dismay, that these were not all the attributes a man looked for in the woman he had made his wife. He had never expected to find Toni clever in an intellectual sense; but neither had he deemed her quite so shallow as she was proving herself to be. She seemed absolutely incapable of making any mental effort; the world of art and literature was a closed book to her, and, what was still more disappointing, she cared nothing for any of the social or political questions of the day, and took absolutely no interest in the contemporary life of the world about her.