singularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a careless
avowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at the
moment from his thoughts. But the very secretiveness of her manner--the
suggestion of a hidden motive which dwelt in her nervous movements and
even quivered in the little scintillating aigrette on her blonde
head--aroused in him if not a positive distrust, still a bewildering and
decidedly unpleasant confusion of ideas. He felt, somehow, vaguely
impelled to action, yet for the life of him, he admitted after a moment,
he could see no single direction in which action with regard to his wife
would not savor of the indiscreet, if not of the ridiculous. The
attitude of an aggrieved husband had always showed to him as something
laughable, and an explosion of jealousy had never appeared more vulgar
than it did while he sat patiently conjecturing if such a domestic
cyclone might be counted upon to shake Connie to her senses. In the end
he gave it up as a farce which he felt it would be beyond the power of
his gravity to sustain. "I'll do anything in reason, heaven knows," he
found himself confessing, after the instant's reflection, "but I'll be
hanged before I'll set out in cold blood to play the fool."

The front door, closing with a bang, brought him instantly to his feet
and, glancing through the window, he saw Connie about to step into a cab
which she had signalled from the sidewalk. Her velvet gown trailed
behind her, and she appeared perfectly unconcerned by the fact that she
had sunk above her ankles in the heavy snowdrifts. A moment later, when
she lifted her train to enter the cab, he discovered to his amazement
that she was wearing low kid shoes with the thinnest of silk stockings.
Then, before he could raise the window for a protest, the cab rolled off
in the direction of Fifth Avenue, and, wet feet and twinkling feather,
she was out of sight.