But the first realizations of her husband's notions as to women were altogether pleasant. As she entered the automobile in which they went to the private car in the special train that took them to New York and the steamer--as she entered that new and prodigally luxurious automobile, she had a first, keen sense of her changed position. Then there was the superb private car--her car, since she was his wife--and there was the beautiful suite in the magnificent steamer. And at every instant menials thrusting attentions upon her, addressing her as if she were a queen, revealing in their nervous tones and anxious eyes their eagerness to please, their fear of displeasing. And on the steamer, from New York to Cherbourg, she was never permitted to lose sight of the material splendors that were now hers. All the servants, all the passengers, reminded her by their looks, their tones. At Paris, in the hotel, in the restaurants, in the shops--especially in the shops--those snobbish instincts that are latent in the sanest and the wisest of us were fed and fattened and pampered until her head was quite turned. And the general began to buy jewels for her. Such jewels--ropes of diamonds and pearls and emeralds, rings such as she had never dreamed existed! Those shopping excursions of theirs in the Rue de la Paix would make such a tale as your ordinary simple citizen, ignorant of the world's resources in luxury and therefore incredulous about them, would read with a laugh at the extravagance of the teller. Before the intoxication of the wedding had worn away it was re-enforced by the intoxication of the honeymoon--not an intoxication of love's providing, but one exceeding potent in its influence upon our weak human brains and hearts, one from which the strongest of us, instead of sneering at poor Mildred, would better be praying to be delivered. At her marriage she had a few hundred dollars left of her patrimony--three hundred and fifty and odd, to be more exact. She spent a little money of her own here and there--in tips, in buying presents for her mother, in picking up trifles for her own toilet. The day came when she looked in her purse and found two one-franc pieces, a fifty-franc note, and a few coppers. And suddenly she sat back and stared, her mouth open like her almost empty gold bag, which the general had bought her on their first day in the Rue de la Paix. About ten dollars in all the world, and the general had forgotten to speak--or to make any arrangement, at least any arrangement of which she was aware--about a further supply of money.