Minne-Adélaïde was gone, but her work remained. A week had passed, but Gundred could never forget that dialogue. Still as far from her mind as ever was any crude distrust of her husband. It was not in her nature to have vulgar suspicions--to attribute to others that ugly baseness of which she herself could never have been capable. But, none the less, she grew vaguely fretted by Isabel’s presence, vaguely unhappy over the interest that Kingston took in her cousin. The two were always saying things that Gundred could not understand. Bit by bit she grew to feel that even to be an efficient housekeeper and a nice, well-dressed person is not always quite sufficient for a wife’s endowment. She made spasmodic attempts to follow Isabel’s flights into the abstract, and sometimes gave a book the preference over needlework. Her conversation became ambitious, aiming at brilliancy, but only achieving flatulence. She talked in capital letters, of high big words without definitions. Her contributions to ethical debate were windy, wearisome, perpetually circular and pointless. She saw that she could not attain to Isabel’s fantastic lightness of touch; she tramped a heavy ring of argument, and, being for ever unable to analyze her own meaning, was quite incapable of conveying it to others. Never before had she found herself inadequate. Now the conviction grew upon her that inadequate--at least, in some directions--she certainly was. She took refuge in the consciousness of her wedding-ring, and in the thought that impiety would be involved in the sharing of much that her husband and Isabel talked of. And for no possible consideration of earthly happiness would Gundred have wished to share impiety.