allows no visitor to enter her apartments if she can help it. Concrete
selfishness is her chief mark. She will avoid responsibility, side-step
every duty that calls for honest effort; is untruthful, secretive,
indolent and dishonest.

"What are you eating?" asks Nora Hebler's husband as she enters the
room, not expecting to see him.

"Nothing," is the answer, and she hides the box of bonbons behind her,
and soon backs out of the room.

I think Mr. Hebler had no business to ask her what she was eating--no
man should ask any woman such a question, and really it was no
difference anyway. But Nora is always on the defensive and fabricates
when it is necessary, and when it isn't, just through habit. She will
hide a letter written by her grandmother as quickly and deftly as if it
were a missive from a guilty lover. The habit of her life is one of
suspicion, for being inwardly guilty herself, she suspects everybody
although it is quite likely that crime with her has never broken through
thought into deed. Nora will rifle her husband's pockets, read his
note-book, examine his letters, and when he goes on a trip she spends
the day checking up his desk, for her soul delights in duplicate keys.

At times she lets drop hints of knowledge concerning little nothings
that are none of hers, just to mystify folks.

She does strange, annoying things simply to see what others will do.

In degree, Nora's husband fixed the vice of finesse in her nature, for
when even a "good" woman is accused she parries by the use of trickery