Yet he liked her surprisingly well in this phase. She had been cutting down his liquor, too. She had been cutting down his extravagances. She had even achieved the height of denying herself luxuries--one of the surest and least-trodden short-cuts to a man's heart--a little secret path he hardly knows himself. The affair of Zada and Cheever was going the normal course. It had lost the charm of the wild and wicked--through familiarity; and it was tending to domestication, as all such moods do if nothing interrupts them. There are all sorts of endings to such illicit relations: most of them end with the mutual treachery of two fickle creatures; some of them end with bitter grief for one or the other or both; some of them end in crime, or at least disgrace; and some of them finish, with disconcerting immorality, in an inexcusable respectability. The improvement in Zada's mind and heart was, curiously, the most dangerous thing in the world for Cheever. If she had stayed noisy and promiscuous and bad, he would have tired of her. But she was growing soft and homey, gentle as ivy, and as hard to tear away or to want to tear away. After all, marriage is only the formalizing of an instinct that existed long before--exists in some animals and birds who mate without formality and stay mated without compulsion. When Zada and Cheever had escaped from the Ritz-Carlton they took lunch at another restaurant. Zada was childishly proud of her tact and of Cheever's appreciation. But afterward, on the way “home”--as she called what other people called her “lair”--she grew suddenly and deeply solemn. “So your wife is with Dyckman again,” she said. “It looks to me like a sketch.” Cheever flushed. He hated her slang and he did not accept her conclusion, but this time he did not forbid her to mention his wife. He could hardly do that when her tact had saved him and Charity from the results of their double indiscretion and the shame of amusing that roomful of gossips. Zada misunderstood his silence for approval; so she spoke her thoughts aloud: “If that He and She business goes on I suppose you'll have to divorce the lady.” “Divorce Charity!” Cheever gasped. “Are you dotty?” That hit Zada pretty hard, but she bore it. She came back by another door. “I guess I am--nearly as dotty as she is about Dyckman. First thing you know she'll be trying to get free herself. What if she asks you for a divorce?” “I'd like to see her!” “You mean you wouldn't give her her freedom?” “Not in a thousand years.” He was astounded at the sepulchral woe of Zada's groan. “O Lord, and I thought--oh--you don't love me at all then! You never really loved me--really! God help me.” Cheever wondered what Zada would smash first. He hoped it would not be the window of the car. He hoped he could get her safely indoors before the smashing began.