Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/565

Rh sickly and abnormal) seemed to hear the running, the footfalls, of little feet. In pretty, uncertain patter they turned to this room—paused at his side or even (he fancied) the high-keyed call of little voices fell deliciously sweet on his ears!

Then, after the dream passed, in the prolonged quiet the murmur from the drawing-room would be audible. The undertone of a man's voice without a break would fill Amory's hearing for an unconscionable time. When his nerves, at dangerous pitch, threatened to make him capable of some act of uncontrollable jealousy, his wife's laugh would break the tension, and at the sound of her voice, if his suffering were no less complete, his control was reestablished.

Coming in from the opera, Mrs. Callender was surprised to see a light in her husband's study so late as past one o'clock. She opened the door and stood in it, her cloak falling from her shoulders, its furs and laces framing bare neck and arms, and her head with its sparkling aigret. Her entrance called Callender's attention from the pages of foolscap he had been filling with rows of figures. The reflection of their portent was stamped in his expression as clearly as though written in flesh and blood. He had no time to alter his countenance. Any one but a woman absorbed in her own emotions would have been startled by his face. As it was, it displeased her that he should appear so listless and fagged when she was full of the joy of life.

"Why are you so late, Amory?"

"I've been going over some accounts."

He had been sitting for hours without moving. The contrast of the lassitude and the defeat he expressed with Delevan, who had left her at her door, put Amory in the wrong; doubly as a voice within her tried to speak for her husband. She exclaimed:

"How foolish, Amory ! You exhaust yourself over this stupid business. You're in a rut; do get out of it. Why didn't you come to-night? I begged you you're tired out!" Her tone petulantly accused him of a state of stupidity, as if he had expressly chosen it to irritate her.

Callender shook himself, called up his spirit, and resumed the mask that had treacherously slipped.

"Oh, I'm all right," he said, cheerfully. "It's an anxious week in the Street. Was the music good?"

"Yes," she answered, absently; "and apropos of overwork, you should really take a rest! I want to go down to Georgia for a couple of weeks. Let's run off to-morrow! It will be just what you need. The Whitelands have asked us to go down on their car"

She had picked up one of the sheets of paper scored and lined with figures—rows upon rows of them.

"I can't go possibly—not now, anyway. Perhaps I can run down and fetch you but you must go, of course, Edith."

She was prepared for the ready permission; it had never failed courteously to follow any proposition made for her pleasure. She hesitated, ashamed of her egoism.

"It seems awfully selfish to leave you alone."

He started, flushing at the first acknowledgment of the complexion of her actions. He laughed with pleasure at her consideration.

"Oh, that's all right! It's beastly weather here, and you can't help me with Wall Street, you know!"

At this touch of his humor she laughed.

"No; I wish I could"

He was delighted. He had dined alone and had not dressed for dinner. In his business clothes, tired and pale, he contrasted again with the distinguished figure of the man too constantly in her thoughts. As her husband came towards her she stepped back a little. But her gentleness had touched him deeply—sensitive, suffering as he was. How beautifully she was dressed! How brilliant she seemed! Oh, he would win for her yet! He wanted to express this to her, to assure her he would stem the tide which threatened their disaster. He would force circumstances to his favor! She should lack nothing—nothing; even if his arms had been empty of her, his care had cradled her, and it should still.

In her bodice, clear and opaque against the satin of her dress, was a white gar-