during the first year and a half of their marriage. They had been
uncommonly happy; they were happy yet ... the difference lay not in the
quality of Hélène's devotion, enhanced always by an outspoken admiration
for himself and his achievements, but in subtle changes of temperament
and spirits.

She had been a gay and irresponsible young creature when he married her,
so much so that he had found it expedient to put her on an allowance and
ask her not to ran up staggering bills in the fashionable shops; which
she visited daily, as much for the pleasure of the informal encounter
with other lively and irresponsible young luminaries of San Francisco
society as for the excitement of buying what she did not want.

He had broached the subject with some trepidation, for they had never had
a quarrel; but she had shown no resentment whatever, merely an eager
desire to please him. She even went directly down to the Palace Hotel and
reproached her august parent for failing to warn her that a dollar was
not capable of infinite expansion.

But no wonder she had been extravagant, she told Ruyler plaintively. It
had been like a fairy tale, this sudden release from the rigid
economies of her girlhood, when she had rarely had a franc in her
pocket, and they had lived in a suite of the old family villa on one
of the hills of Rouen, Madame Delano paying her brother for their
lodging, and dressing herself and Hélène with the aid of a half
paralyzed seamstress with a fiery red nose. Ma foi! It was the
nightmare of her youth, that nose and that croaking voice. But the
woman had fingers, and a taste! And her mother could have concocted a
smart evening frock out of an old window curtain.