"The nervous strain--" she began, once more wondering if this were not the moment to slip in a word of Alvah Loft. But though Manford had wished to be with her he had apparently no desire to listen to her. It was all her own fault, she felt. If only she had known how to reveal the secret tremors that were rippling through her! There were women not half as clever and tactful--not younger, either, nor even as good-looking--who would have known at once what to say, or how to spell the mute syllables of soul-telegraphy. If her husband had wanted facts--a good confidential talk about the new burglar-alarm, or a clear and careful analysis of the engine-house bills, or the heating system for the swimming pool--she could have found just the confidential and tender accent for such topics. Intimacy, to her, meant the tireless discussion of facts, not necessarily of a domestic order, but definite and palpable facts. For her part she was ready for anything, from Birth Control to neo-impressionism: she flattered herself that few women had a wider range. In confidential moments she preferred the homelier themes, and would have enjoyed best of all being tender and gay about the coal cellar, or reticent and brave about the leak in the boiler; but she was ready to deal with anything as long as it was a fact, something with substance and outline, as to which one could have an opinion and a line of conduct. What paralyzed her was the sense that, apart from his profession, her husband didn't care for facts, and that nothing was less likely to rouse his interest than burglar-alarm wiring, or the last new thing in electric ranges. Obviously, one must take men as they were, wilful, moody and mysterious; but she would have given the world to be told (since for all her application she had never discovered) what those other women said who could talk to a man about nothing. Manford lit a cigar and stared into the fire. "It's about that fool Amalasuntha," he began at length, addressing his words to the logs. The name jerked Pauline back to reality. Here was a fact--hard, knobby and uncomfortable! And she had actually forgotten it in the confused pleasure of their tête-à-tête! So he had only come home to talk to her about Amalasuntha. She tried to keep the flatness out of her: "Yes, dear?" He continued, still fixed on the fire: "You may not know that we've had a narrow escape." "A narrow escape?" "That damned Michelangelo--his mother was importing him this very week. The cable had gone. If I hadn't put a stop to it we'd have been saddled with him for life." Pauline's breath failed her. She listened with straining ears. "You haven't seen her, then--she hasn't told you?" Manford continued. "She was getting him out on her own responsibility to turn a film for Klawhammer. Simply that! By the mercy of heaven I headed her off--but we hadn't a minute to lose."