Her answer was made with the storm in the eyes that was always my warning of danger. "As much as I’d let him. I didn’t want to hear any more. I never shall. That part of it is closed. I’ve told you already that I accept the responsibility, and I do. You mayn’t think it, but I have a conscience of a kind; and I know that if it hadn’t been for me you wouldn’t have done this thing; and so— But there we are again. There we shall always be if we allow ourselves to discuss it. You’re my husband, Billy; I’m your wife. We can’t get away from that, whatever has happened—" "We could get away from it, if you preferred." "What I prefer," she declared, with her old-time hauteur, "is what I’m asking you to do. If I didn’t prefer it I shouldn’t ask for it. Go back to the hotel and get your things. Go to the tailor and get more. Your room is waiting for you. It will be the next room to mine, just as before with only the door—" "The closed door, Vio?" "Between us," she finished, ignoring my question. "If other things arrange themselves we can—we can reopen it—in time." So we left it, since it was useless to go on. That she should consider my mental lapse so terrible a disgrace was a surprise to me; but as I so considered it myself I could not blame another for taking the same point of view. After all, a man should show a man’s nerve. Thousands, millions of men, had shown it to the limit and beyond. I hadn’t; that was all that could be said about it. How could Vio, how could any one else, regard me as other than abnormal? As she was making so brave an attempt to put all this behind her, it became my duty to help her. This I could do most easily by deflecting the conversation to the large family connection, as to which I was without news. She gave me this news as we stood at the foot of the stairway, or while I got ready to go out again. It was a relief to learn that none of my brothers or sisters was in Boston. George, who was older than myself, was on General Pershing’s staff, and had just been heard of from Luxembourg. Dan, my junior, had the rank of lieutenant-commander and was somewhere in European waters. Tom Cantley, who had married my sister Minna, was working on the War Trade Board in Washington, and he and Minna had a house there. Their eldest boy, Harrowby, had been killed at Château-Thierry, but as far as any one ever saw Minna hadn’t shed a tear. Ernestine, my unmarried sister, being one of the founders of the Flag Raising League, had patriotic duties which took her all over the United States. Her last letter had been from Oklahoma or Spokane, Vio was not sure which, but it was "one of those places out there." At any rate, they were all a credit to a name the traditions of which I alone hadn’t had the spirit to live up to. Vio didn’t say this, of course; but it was the inference.