"Not things, not--not toys," Trixton Brent's expression involuntarily
coming to her lips. "Oh, can't you see I'm not that kind of a woman? I
don't want to be bought. I want you, whatever you are, if you are. I want
to be saved. Take care of me--see a little more of me--be a little
interested in what I think. God gave me a mind, and--other men have
discovered it. You don't know, you can't know, what temptations you
subject me to. It isn't right, Howard. And oh, it is humiliating not to
be able to interest one's husband."

"But you do interest me," he protested.

She shook her head.

"Not so much as your business," she said; "not nearly so much."

"Perhaps I have been too absorbed," he confessed. "One thing has followed
another. I didn't suspect that you felt this way. Come, I'll try to brace
up." He pressed her to him. "Don't feel badly. You're overwrought. You've
exaggerated the situation, Honora. We'll go in on the eight o'clock train
together and look at the house--although I'm afraid it's a little steep,"
he added cautiously.

"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora. "I don't want it."

"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning.
We'll go and look at it, anyway."

Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely
resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be
justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is