In August the girls went to Newport, and Patience became very tired of her mother-in-law. May returned engaged to a wealthy Cuban, who had been dancing attendance on her blondinitude for some months past, and Mrs. Peele became so amiable that she forgot to lecture her daughter-in-law or irritate her with the large vigilance of her polaric eyes. The girls left again for Lenox and Tuxedo. On the first of January the family moved to their town house for the winter.

Patience was alone with her husband.

During the first three days of this new connubial solitude it snowed heavily. Beverly could not ride nor drive, and wandered restlessly between the stable and the library, where his wife sat before the blazing logs.

There were some two thousand volumes at Peele Manor. Patience had had no time to read since her marriage, but on the morning of the family’s departure she made for the library, partly in self defence, partly with pleasurable anticipation. She hoped that Beverly would succumb to the charms of the stable, where there were many congenial spirits and a comfortable parlour; but she had barely discovered Heine’s prose and had read but ten pages of the “Reisebilder,” when the door opened, and he came in. She merely nodded, and went on reading. She was barely conscious of his presence, for Heine is a magician, and she was already under his spell.

“Well, you might shut up your book and talk to me,” said Beverly, pettishly, flinging himself into a chair opposite her. “This is a nice way to treat a fellow on a stormy day.”

“Oh, you read too,” murmured Patience.

“No, I will not. I want to talk to you.”

Patience closed the book over her finger and looked at him impatiently. Then an idea occurred to her, and she spoke with her usual impulsiveness.

“Look, Beverly,” she said, “you and I have to spend many months alone together, and if we are to make a success of matrimony we must be companions, and to be companions we must have similar tastes. Now I’ll make a bargain with you: I’ll try to like horses if you’ll try to like books. On pleasant days I’ll ride and drive with you, and when it storms we’ll read together here in the library. I am sure you will like it after a time. If you find it tiresome to read to yourself I’ll read aloud. I don’t mind, and then we can talk it over.”

“All right,” said Beverly. “Anything you say. What’s that you’re reading now?”

“Heine’s prose. He is wonderful—such a style and such sardonic wit, and such exquisite thoughts. I’ll begin all over again. Now light a cigar and make yourself comfortable.”

For a half hour she read aloud, and then Mr. Peele remarked,—

“Hang it! The skating is spoiled for a week.”

“Oh, Beverly, you haven’t been listening.”

“Well, I don’t like it very much. He skips around so. Besides, I always did hate Germans. Give me America every time.”

“Well, read something American then,” said Patience, crossly.

“You find something and read it to me. I like to hear your voice, even if I can’t keep my mind on it. Wait a while though. I guess I’ll go and see how the stable is getting on.”

He bent down to kiss his wife, but she was once more absorbed, and did not see him. He snatched the book from her with an oath and flung it across the room. She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes, pushed him aside with no gentle hand, and ran after the book.

“You sha’n’t read that book!” he cried. “The idea of forgetting your husband for a book—a book! You are a lovely wife! You are a disgrace to the name! You would rather read than kiss your husband! I’ll lock this room up, damned if I don’t.”

“I’ll go and live with Miss Beale and do Temperance work,” sobbed Patience. “I won’t live with you.”

“Oh, you won’t—what? What did I marry you for? My God! What did I marry you for? My life is hell, for I’m no fool. I know you don’t love me. You married me for my money.”

“I wish I had,” she exclaimed passionately, then controlled herself. “I hope we are not going to squabble in the usual commonplace way. I shall not, at any rate. If you lose your temper, you can have the quarrel all to yourself. I shall not pay any attention to you. Now go out to the stable and cool off, and when you come back I’ll read something else to you.”

“Do you love me?”

“Oh, yes—yes.”

And Beverly disappeared, slamming the door behind him.

“I wonder if any one on earth has such a temper,” she thought. “And people believe that vulgarity and lack of control are confined to the lower classes! What is the matter with civilisation anyhow? I can only explain my own remarkable aberration in this way: youthful love is a compound of curiosity, a surplus of vitality, and inherited sentimentalism. It is likely to arrive just after the gamut of children’s diseases has run its course. Of course the disease is merely a complacent state of the system until the germ arrives, which same is the first attractive and masterful man. All diseases run their course, however. I could not be more insensible to Beverly Peele’s dead ancestors out in the vault than I am to him. No woman is capable of loving at nineteen. She is nothing but an overgrown child, a chaos of emotions and imagination. There ought to be a law passed that no woman could marry until she was twenty-eight. Then, perhaps a few of us would feel less like—Well, there is nothing to do but make the best of it, regard life as a highly seasoned comedy, in which one is little more than a spectator, after all—and at present I have Heine.”

Beverly did not return for an hour. When he did she rose at once, and running her eye along the shelves, selected a volume of Webster’s Speeches.

“You like politics,” she said; “and all of us should read the great works of our great men. I’ll read the famous Seventh of March Speech.”

And she did, Beverly listening with considerable attention. When she had finished he remarked enthusiastically,—

“Do you know what that speech has made me make up my mind to do? I’m going to run for the Senate, and make speeches like that myself.”

Patience merely stared at him. She wondered if he were really something more than a fool; if there was a sort of post-graduate course.

“What makes you look at me like that? Don’t you think I can?”

“Well—” She hardly knew what to say.

“Well! Is that the way you encourage a fellow? You are a nice wife. Here my father has been at me all my life to do something, and just as soon as I make up my mind, my wife laughs at me.”

“I didn’t laugh at you.”

“Well, it’s all the same. If I never do anything, it’ll be your fault.”

“Go to the Senate just as fast as ever you can get there. And you might as well spend the rest of the day studying Webster; but suppose you read to yourself for a while: my throat is tired.”

“I don’t like to read to myself.”

“Well, anyhow, I hear Lawson coming. Luncheon is ready.”

The table in the dining-room had been divested of its leaves, and the young couple sat only a few feet apart. The room had once been a banqueting-hall. It was very large and dark. The white light filtered meagrely through the small panes. The wind moaned through the naked elms.

“The country is awfully dull in winter,” remarked Patience. “I wish we were in town.”

“That’s a beautiful speech to make to a husband. I don’t mind so long as you are here.”

“Of course I am deeply flattered,” and she smiled upon him. There seemed nothing else to do.

“Damn it!” cried Beverly, “this steak is as thin as a plate and burnt to a cinder. Patience, I do wish you’d give some of your attention to housekeeping and less to books. It is your place to see that things are properly cooked, now that Honora is gone.”

“Oh, dear. I don’t know anything about cooking, or housekeeping, either.”

“Well, then, I’d be much obliged if you’d learn as quickly as possible. Take this steak out,” he said to the maid, “and bring some cold beef or ham. Damn it! I might have known that when Honora went away I’d have nothing fit to eat, with this new cook.”

But Patience refused to continue the conversation, and when the ham and beef came he ate of them with such relish that his good-nature returned as speedily as it had departed.

During the afternoon the scene of the morning was repeated with variations, and the same might be said of the two following days. Then came an interval of sleighing and skating. Then rain turned the snow to slush, and once again Beverly exhibited the characteristics of a caged tiger.

“I shall have nervous prostration before the winter is over,” thought Patience, who was still determined to take the situation humorously, still refused to face her former self. “I do wish the family would come back, mother-in-law and all.”

Occasionally, despite Beverly’s indignant protests, she went to town for the day, and shopped or paid calls with Hal. On one occasion they went to see Rosita. That “beautiful young prima donna of ever increasing popularity” wore black gauze over gold-coloured tights, and acted and sang and danced and allured with consummate art. The opera house was two-thirds crowded with men, although there was the usual matinÉe contingent of girls and young married women.

“Well,” thought Patience, “she’s way ahead of me, for she’s made a success of herself, at least, and is not bothered with scruples and regrets.”

The winter dragged along as slowly as if time had lamed the old man, then fallen asleep. The relations between Patience and Beverly became very strained. His frequent tempers were alternated by sulks. He was genuinely unhappy, for limited as he was, mentally and spiritually, he was very human; and in his primitive way he loved his wife.

Patience’s resolution to go through life as a cynical humourist, deaf and blind to the great wants of her nature, died hard, but it died at last. Monotony accentuated fact, and the time came when pretence failed her, and she visibly shrank from his lightest caress. The tide of horror and loathing had risen slowly, but definitely. He threatened to kill her, to commit suicide, to get a divorce; but his threats did not disturb her. He was too weak to kill himself, too proud to make himself ridiculous in the divorce courts, and too much in love to put her beyond his reach. What sustained her was the hope that his passion would die a natural death, and that they would then go their diverse ways as other married people did,—that had come to seem to her the most blessed meaning of the holy state of matrimony. Then she could enjoy her books, and he would permit her to spend the winters in New York, or in travel.

Beverly’s affections, however, showed no sign of dissolution.