This answer, and the way it was delivered, was all that Beecher was permitted to understand of an episode which deserves a novel to itself. Nevertheless, he felt that there must have been something far out of the ordinary to have brought forth from Gunther this eulogy, which sounded at the moment like an epitaph. When Beecher entered the lights were up on the act. During the time in which he had been absent, his wife, too, had been a prey to dramatic moods. The stage and the world had been before her eyes as the choices of her own life. She comprehended what Beecher did not, all the advantages of her first appearance in New York under the patronage of the Gunthers, that was in itself a social cachet. Mrs. Slade’s flattering visit, as well as the accented cordiality of acquaintances who had bowed to her from their boxes, made her feel how easy would be her way in this world, so easy of access by one entrance and so hostile by a thousand others. She was satisfied. Her doubts, if she had yielded to them a moment, were gone. She had talked to Gunther of what she wanted for her husband, and made of him a friend, not insensible to the reason of the charm which she had exerted. But in the moment in which the social world presented itself to her as the endless stretching Pacific flashed upon the dazzled eyes of Balboa, she felt a sudden sense of loneliness and the need of support. She rested her hand on the strong-muscled arm of her husband, and designating with a smile the young girl who was so artlessly and artfully conveying her impatient delight at Bruce’s return, she sent her husband one of those looks which only a perfectly happy woman has the power to retain ... that first fugitive, timid offering in the eyes of lovers. The next day Mrs. Craig Fontaine’s engagement was announced in all the papers. It was a romance of long standing ... the engagement now made public for the first time was supposed to have lasted several months, etc.