Linda was immediately busy organizing her household, buying, buying all day long; visiting, receiving visitors; she had crowds of friends and gushing acquaintances, and they easily assimilated her husband, were interested in him as they were interested in her wall-papers, her furniture, her plans for the little garden, her gowns, her china. He used to watch eagerly, almost hungrily, for a sign that they recognized his existence apart from hers, but no sign ever came. To the women he was something belonging to dear Linda, and therefore to be admired since she was reputed to get the best of everything; to the men, hard-headed, commercial gentry, he seemed to be baffling and ominous, for they either fished nervously and falteringly for his views or left him in the silence to which their geniality reduced him. He resumed his work at the school where he had not yet learned to disengage himself from his schoolboy's sensations--dread of the headmaster, an inclination to run along the corridors when the bell sounded, a desire to smack cheeky little boys over the head, reluctance to attend prayers in the morning. At the end of the year a vacancy occurred on the staff of the university and he was appointed to fill it. His first tussle with Linda came with his assertion of a desire to be alone in his study when he was working. She had made a practice of settling down with him in the evening with her sewing, or some clerical work connected with one of the various committees to which she had had herself appointed--social and rescue work, Arts and Crafts, the University Musical Society, the Thrigsby Amateur Dramatic Club, the Goethe Society, etc. She had learned to be silent, but by the plying of her needle or the scratching of her pen she disturbed and distracted him. He put up with it for some time, but at last it was too strong for him, and he protested. "But Mrs. Smallman sits with her husband every evening." "He may be used to it, and she has a capacity for doing nothing which you do not share." "But it's so absurd to have two fires lit in the evening." "I'd rather not work then, and come and sit with you." "But you must work. You never say anything." "Then I must work alone." "Why must you?" "Because I can't work any other way." "What is it disturbs you? I won't do it if you'll tell me." "I can't tell you. It's just having you there." "Then you-- Then you-- Oh, well! There's nothing more to say if you feel like that about me." "Linda, don't be silly. It isn't about you." She had already fluttered out of the room and closed the door very slowly, so that its movement was the most eloquent reproach.