love.

When the splendid, florid Doctor, with his majestically curving
expanse of waistcoat and his inscrutable face, whirred through the
streets of Fairbridge in his motor car, with that meek bulk of
womanhood beside him, many said quite openly how unfortunate it was
that Doctor Sturtevant had married, when so young, a woman so
manifestly his inferior. They never failed to confer that faint
praise, which is worse than none at all, upon the poor soul.

"She is a good woman," they said. "She means well, and she is a good
housekeeper, but she is no companion for a man like that."

Poor Mrs. Sturtevant was aware of her status in Fairbridge, and she
was not without a steady, plodding ambition of her own. That utterly
commonplace, middle-aged face had some lines of strength. Mrs.
Sturtevant was a member of the women's club of Fairbridge, which was
poetically and cleverly called the Zenith Club.

She wrote, whenever it was her turn to do so, papers upon every
imaginable subject. She balked at nothing whatever. She ranged from
household discussions to the Orient. Then she stood up in the midst
of the women, sunk her double chin in her lace collar, and read her
paper in a voice like the whisper of a blade of grass. Doctor
Sturtevant had a very low voice. His wife had naturally a strident
one, but she essayed to follow him in the matter of voice, as in all
other things. The poor hen bird tried to voice her thoughts like her
mate, and the result was a strange and weird note. However, Mrs.
Sturtevant herself was not aware of the result. When she sat down
after finishing her papers her face was always becomingly flushed