Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/596

586 What should I do? My blood was tingling in my veins. I saw that to remain where I was would be impossible. Should I fly from the room by a door close at hand, thus gaining the outer hall, and thence leaving the house ? ..

But very soon a great change took place in Millicent. She had mastered her agitation. She rose from the chair and slowly approached me. She was still pale, but her tears had ceased to flow.

"You must think me wretchedly foolish," she said, as she came up to my side again.

"You surprised me a little; that was all," I replied. "Was it the music? Yes; what else could it have been?"

"It was the music—and what it seemed to desire."

"And that made you think of yourself?"

"Yes. It expressed just my own . . dissatisfaction. I suppose that is the right word. I don't mean unhappiness. I'm not unhappy. Why should I be ? Floyd is the very soul of devotion and kindness. And yet . ." She paused, and gave a heavy sigh, sweeping my face wistfully with her luminous blue eyes.

"You are discontented, then?" I said. "Only that. And you know why. . . Am I wrong, here, in asserting that you really do know why?"

She shook her head. "No. I can't help knowing why. It is being kept forever from seeing people, as he keeps me! It is feeling that I'm almost like one of those Eastern women, except that my seraglio doesn't overlook palms and lemon-groves; it commands a prospect of Second Avenue."

"Now that you have chosen to speak of this matter," I said, "you make it possible for me in turn to talk upon it."

"You have noticed, then!" she exclaimed, with a kind of eager sadness.

"Good heavens, Mrs. Demotte! I am not blind!"

She laid one hand on my arm. "Why do you call me by that tiresomely ceremonious name?" she asked. "I've told you I did not like it from the lips of a friend such as you are to both of us, and Floyd has told you he would much prefer you to call me Millicent."

"Well, . . Millicent," I said.

"Thanks. . . And so you have noticed how he behaves? Of course you must. Do you know, it seems to me like a disease with him, this perpetual dread of my giving a word or a smile to any one besides himself? If he were not so mild-natured I should grow frightened about it all; I should feel like one of Bluebeard's wives—the last one, I mean, that he hadn't yet murdered. . . Ah, it's horrid, is it not, for me to say anything so hard of poor, fond Floyd, even in jest? You must have seen, too, how I've appeared to bear it all quite uncomplainingly."

"I have seen that—and with astonishment."

"Why 'with astonishment'?" she questioned, drawing back from me a little, and giving her tones an almost hurt inflection. "Is not Floyd my dear, chosen husband? Ought I to complain if it were dealing him distress for me to complain?"