else. Just now. I mean I've got to. I hope I will, Provost." She would, of course, he replied. Provost patted her reassuringly on the arm. "Good girl. Every one approves of you. I hear them talking about it, do you see? I think you are quite all right."

"Do you?" she said. "Really. That's a great help. I used to think I didn't need help. But I've changed my mind. I-" She stopped sharply, appalled by what she might say, where it might lead her. All of them. There were no words for what she wanted to tell him. Ask. Why, he might hate her. Oh, but very easily. Leave her. Outraged. When it should be she. But if he might kill the fear in her it would be worth any risk. If he could. Were able. A question returned in a slightly new form. How much did Provost love her? Money, in great amounts, as a matter of fact, came between people. It made other people, more amusing or exciting people, so terribly easy to get. She had watched it with Provost at dinners. Parties. It held so much that it destroyed special, particular, things. Things like love, for example. It substituted simply everything outside for the few doubtful, the obscured, things within. The things within were such a bother. They required so much hard thought. Resolution. Then, too, no one was interested or helped you with them. They were a nuisance to other people.

With money you could take a fast car, or a faster private train, and get away. And you did. Oftener than not. And quite right, too, if you felt like that about it. Love rather stayed around the house. She could see that clearly. You had babies and saw that the windows were washed. The windows behind her were immaculate. But she had nothing to do with it. Nothing in the world. If she went away they would still be immaculate. She didn't even have to speak about it. A housekeeper did that. She could discharge the housekeeper, but she knew she wouldn't. What was the use? There were more amusing things to do than bother about windows. Ordering. All she did now was to say there would be ten for dinner. Or twenty. Or two thousand. That was all. And she liked it that way. But love was different.

"You're pretty quiet," Provost said. "It's rather unnatural."

"I was thinking about money," she admitted.

"I hope you don't want any. I haven't had more than two dollars in my pocket for a week." He found a crumpled dollar bill, two quarters, a nickel and some pennies. He dropped it into her lap. "Just like that. I'm a pretty generous husband, you'll find." She returned it to him. "Don't be foolish. You'll need it for rent or the milk or something. I might waste it on silk stockings." Provost asked how much silk stockings did cost. She had no idea. "Those thick ones for golf were— No, I can't remember."

"How about the ones with the panels of Venise rose-point?"

"Don't, Provost," she begged him.

"There you make me quite a little sick," he replied. "That was a dreadful place you were brought up in. You have an idea it's a disgrace for a man to know about rose-point. It's fearfully robust, of course, but silly. I wish I could get it out of your head."

"Well, I was thinking about money. Rather what it did to you."

"You'll never have to bother about that."

"You're wrong," she said earnestly. Her fear turned into an acute fright. Fright at what she might say. She had a feeling that the situation was getting beyond her control. God, she hoped the rope would hold her. "It wasn't the silk stockings," she continued. "Different from that. A great deal more important. At least for me. I was thinking that after a certain amount money stopped being just money. It was something different. Power, perhaps. Like water changing to steam. Water changing into steam." She repeated that. It was so true. It expressed so exactly what she meant.

"And steam is dangerous," she added gravely. "It blows up things. Money is dangerous. I didn't suppose it was but it is. I thought I could get away with it very nicely. A jump in a paddock. I've been patting myself on the back. The garden is sweet, Provost." He nodded, obviously surprised. "But, do you see, it's getting to be all in shadow? Even the youngest, the reddest, tulips. Yes, I

"Listen," Provost interrupted, "get somewhere. I don't care what it is, but reach it. In a little, if you keep on, I'll be crazy. I will. You've got a prayer-meeting sort of voice and I haven't an idea what it is you are saying. Have you been buying some bad stock or just some subscription books from a bird at the door?" "Don't interrupt," she warned him. "It's serious." He could see that, he added. “I'd like to be happy, Provost." Her voice had intimations of a wail. "I don't want to be upset. Changed. Not any. You see, I am now. Or at least I was. And I'd made up my mind how to do it. I thought it out before our wedding. Provost, I didn't marry you for money, but I wouldn't have married you without it. That's as clearly as I can say it. As honest. But I did have a decided feeling about you, too. Or it would have been impossible.'

"I think you'd better stop," he told her. "I hate soul-searching. Besides, it's so useless. Specially nonsense like this. Sheer nonsense," he grew shrilly indignant. "You married me and that's enough. After all, I didn't find you outside a café. You didn't need money. You had plenty. And I don't want to listen to this. I know you're honest without it. And if you're getting around to something disagreeable, I wish you wouldn't. You don't want to leave me?" She smiled directly into his eyes. "Well, then, go to hell with it. Will you? And stop reading confession magazines."

He turned a little away from her. Almost sulky. Provost was really very goodlooking. Delicate, of course, very fair, but good-looking. She couldn't imagine better clothes. Except for his socks, and they were too fragile a rose. He was young, too. She had forgotten to allow for that. Twenty-five. Perhaps he was too young for complete dependence. Perhaps, wanting to, he wouldn't be able to help her. It would take a great deal of understanding. Balance. The odds against them, against their ages, were frightfully long.

"Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about your father," she said. "He doesn't seem real to me. I mean the way

you do. He's like a force instead of a person. He's so perfect where he is. With so much. No one else in the world could do it as well. Your mother is marvellous, of course. But he doesn't make the slightest effort. It's all so easy. So perfect. Do you know, I have never seen him with new clothes on. He must buy them. I can't think how he manages. His ridingbreeches. The polish on his boots. It's like preserved quinces. And then his manner, Provost. He takes everything for granted." She fell into a little silence. "Everything," she repeated. Although it was audible, the word was addressed to no one. To herself.

"I know what you mean," he agreed. "Lots of people feel that way about him. The way it affects me, you'll be surprised to know, is that it keeps me away from him. I never get near him. Not really. He won't let me. Or he can't. That's better. Anette, I wouldn't say this to any one else, he's frozen by what he has. Or what he is

"Frozen," she interrupted him; "oh, do you think so?"

"I know just what you mean," he reiterated. "He's like the thing that controls an enormous power. A switch. He puts it on and off. Anette, I don't believe he has a particle of feeling. Except perhaps for himself. And I've never seen that. He is always quite calm. Telling people what to do. He never does things himself. I don't mean that. He must. But you'd never guess it. I've seen him drink two quarts of champagne. But no one would have guessed it. It didn't do anybody any good. He was just a little quieter than usual." Provost fell silent. Then, “I wonder," he said. "I wonder?" She asked what he was wondering, but he only shook his head. "Little girls-" he told her, leaving his implication at once suspended and clear. "Damn it, he can't be a Puritan," Provost burst out. "He can't be. But no one, simply no one, gets a thing on him. I've watched him, but it's useless. He likes all the pretty ones. He's perfectly grand to them. . . all. He gives them beautiful presents, you know that, but just because they're a part of the picture."

"You'll remember I met your father before you," she proceeded. "When I

was at French Lick. And he was divine to me. I almost always had his car, and he was almost never in it. Then when you came with the Fannings he had me to dinner the first night. He put us together. Provost, it was your father who married us! We really had nothing to do with it. I never realized that before, and you can't think how relieved I am. Do you see, I wasn't mercenary. I had nothing to do with it. You had nothing to do with it. Your mother didn't either. Since she wasn't there."

"Very well, then," Provost replied. "Why did he? Can you tell me? A small thing like that might explain him. I mean, Anette, to be perfectly frank, there were other girls you'd think he would back first. Girls near us here. People he's always known. You'd think he'd want an older wife with what was coming. Want me to wait." She said:

"He liked me, Provost." Provost was impatient. "What's that got to do with it? We were talking about something really important to him."

"He liked me, Provost," she repeated. There was a long silence. Except, where she was concerned, for the loud beating of her heart. Her fear grew into a sensation of impending calamity. It was no longer a cold weight inside her but the blackness of the storm about her head. I've ruined it all, she thought. I ruined it because I wasn't strong enough to stand alone. I couldn't meet life. I've failed. Suddenly she wasn't sorry for herself but for Provost. She had been only silly to think for a minute he could give up so much for her. Give so much to her. But then she had wanted him, wanted something special from him, so terribly.

In the end she would pay for it. She would lose all, little or big, that she'd had. And the littlest little might have been enough. More than enough. So much more than other women had. But she had wanted the most. He stirred sharply. Then he rose. She gazed up at him and saw that his face was white but composed. Except for his full lower lip. It trembled but his hands were still. Provost put them in the pockets of his jacket and stood looking out over the sunken garden. It was now filled with shadow. The tea on the far terrace was at an end. Only ser

vants, in white and silver, were left. Removing the tea-things.

Provost didn't speak and she couldn't. She had put him beyond the sound, the appeal or help, of her voice. She had made it impossible to help him. He must be lonelier now, more shockingly alone, than she had ever been. And he was younger than she had remembered. She had only thought of him as a man married to her. The man she had married. When the truth was he was hardly more than a boy. With a very special character. He was, to put it as brutally as possible, feminine. His voice was feminine and his hands, his wrists, were weak. In so desperately wanting him to help her she had forgotten his great need to have her help him. She had promised herself to do exactly that. Always.

"You must excuse me." He was, at last, speaking to her. But in a strange voice. A strange manner. His manner was coldly formal, precisely courteous. Like his father. His voice was thin, as usual, but frozen. She looked up questioningly. "But of course," she said. He turned and left her. An enormous weariness settled over her. The shadow left the garden. In its place there was a pure transparent twilight. The amber radiance had faded from the oak-trees. The quaker-ladies were exactly the color of evening, and they would be lost in it. The lambs quiet by their feeding mothers. There were footsteps behind her, but she didn't turn. She couldn't stir. It was Provost. He took the place beside her he had left.

"It was a good thing I went in," he said in his customary pitch. "Father was about to have the mirror taken out of the dining-room. I told him at once that though the ground was his, any house we lived in was our house. I told him the mirror must stay where it was. I liked it there. I liked what it showed me." She laid a hand on his knee. "I told him," Provost Moderan said, "that if he moved it, if he touched it, I would kill him." The very quality of his voice took any bravado from his declaration. It was a literal and profoundly convincing statement. The twilight flowed up from the sunken garden, from under the oak-trees, and made them one.