Page:Touchstone (Wharton 1900).djvu/72

 He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight. The sudden movement lifted his wife's lids, and she asked, in the incurious voice of the woman whose life is enclosed in a magic circle of prosperity—"Any news?"

"No—none—" he said, roused to a sense of immediate peril. The papers lay scattered at his feet—what if she were to see them? He stretched his arm to gather them up, but his next thought showed him the futility of such concealment. The same advertisement would appear every day, for weeks to come, in every newspaper; how could he prevent her seeing it? He could not always be hiding the papers from her. Well, and what if she did see it? It would signify nothing to her; the chances were that she would never even read the book. As she ceased to be an element of fear in his calculations the distance between them seemed to lessen and he took her again, as it were, into the circle of his conjugal protection. Yet a moment before he had almost hated her! He laughed aloud at his senseless terrors. He was off his balance, decidedly.