glance caress him, all unconscious of her presence. In one hand he was balancing a huge bottle; the other held a long test tube. He was slowly dropping the bottle's contents of quiet colorless liquid into the test tube, which was half full of a liquid, also quiet and colorless. Each drop as it touched the surface of the liquid dissolved into black steam. It was this steam that gave off the pungent odor. As she watched, there came a slow tightening at her throat, at her heart.

"I never saw him look like this," thought she. No, it wasn't his serious intentness; one of the things she had first noted about him, and best loved, was the seriousness of his deep-set dark gray eyes—the look of the man who "amounts to something," and would prove it before he got through. No, it was the kind of seriousness. She felt she was seeing a Richard Vaughan she did not know at all. "But, then," she reflected, "there's a side of me he doesn't know about either." This, however, did not satisfy her. The man she was now seeing disquietingly suggested that the Richard Vaughan she had been knowing and loving and had been loved by was not the real man at all, but only one of his moods. "I thought he just amused himself with chemistry. Instead— Nanny is about right." A pang shot through her; she would have recognized it as jealousy, had she stopped to think. But at nineteen one does not stop to think. "I do believe he cares almost as much for this as he does for me."

He lowered the bottle to the table. As he straightened up, he caught sight of her. His expression changed; but the change was not nearly enough either in degree or in kind to satisfy her. "Hello!" cried he carelessly. "Good morning."

She got ready to be kissed. But, instead of coming toward her, he half turned away, to hold the test tube up between his eyes and the light. "Um—mm," he grumbled, shaking it again and again, and each time looking disappointedly at the unchanged liquid.

Like all American girls of the classes that shelter their women, she had been brought up to accept as genuine the pretense of superhuman respect and deference the American man—usually in all honesty—affects toward woman—until he marries her, or for whatever reason becomes tired and truthful. She had been confirmed in these ideas of man as woman's incessant courtier, almost servant, by receiving for the last five lively years the admiration, exaggerated and ardent, which physical charm, so long as it is potent, exacts from the male. No more than other women of her age—or than older women—or than the men had she penetrated the deceptive surface of things and discovered beneath "chivalry's" smug meaningless professions the reality, the forbearance of "strength" with "weakness," the graciousness of superior for inferior. Thus, such treatment as this of Dick's would have been humiliating from a casual man, on a casual occasion. From her husband, her lover, the man she had just been garlanding with all the fairest flowers of her ardent young heart—from him, and on this "first" morning, this unconcern, which Nanny's talk enabled her to understand, was worse than stab into feminine vanity; it was stab straight into her inmost self, the seat of her life.

She dared not admit the wound—not to her own secret thought. Bravely she struggled until her voice and manner were under control. "I've come to take you to breakfast," said she. It seemed to her that her tone was gratifying evidence of triumph of strength of character over "silly supersensitiveness—as if Dick could mean to hurt me!"

"Breakfast," repeated he. His gaze was discontentedly upon the bottle whose contents had acted disappointingly. "Breakfast— Oh, yes— Don't wait on me. I had coffee before I came down here. I'll be along in a few minutes." He took up the bottle again, resumed the cautious pouring.

The tears sprang to her eyes; her lip quivered. But sweet reasonableness conquered again, and she perched on a high stool near the door. She gazed round, tried to interest herself in the certainly extraordinary exhibits on floor and tables and shelves. She recalled the uses of the instruments she recognized, tried to guess the uses of those that were new to her. But her mind refused to wander from the one object that really interested her in that room. Perhaps ten minutes passed, she watching him, he watching the unchanged liquid in the test tube.

She had been born in her father's and mother's prime. She had been taught to use her brain. Thus, underneath the romantic and idealizing upper strata of her character there was the bedrock of good common sense, to resist and to survive any and all shocks. As she sat watching her engrossed husband her love, her fairness, and her good sense pleaded for him, or, rather, protested against her sensitiveness. What a dear he was! And how natural that he should be absorbed in these experiments, after having been away so long. What right had she to demand that his mood should be the same as hers? What a silly child she had shown herself, expecting him to continue to act as if love making were the whole of life. If he were to be, and to do exactly as she wished, would she not soon grow sick of him, as of the other men, who had thought to win her by inviting her to walk on them? Her eyes were sweet and tender when Dick, happening to glance seeingly in her direction, saw her ensconced, chin on hand, elbow on knee. "Hello," said he half absently. "Good morning."

There was no room for doubt; he had completely forgotten her. As her skin was not white, but of delicate pale yet rosy bronze, it did not readily betray change of emotion. But such a shock had he given her sensitive young heart, in just the mood of love and longing to be most easily bruised, that even his abstraction was penetrated. He set the bottle down. "Didn't I speak to you—" he began, and then remembered. "I beg your pardon," he said, contrite and amused.

Pride always hides a real wound. She smiled. "I'm waiting to take you to breakfast," she said.

He looked uncertainly at the bottle and the tube.

A wave of remorse for her thoughts swept over her. "Also," she went on, and she was radiant again, "I'm waiting to be kissed."

He laughed, gazed lovingly at her. "What a beauty she is, this morning," he cried. "Like the flowers—the roses—the finest rose that every grew—in a dream of roses."

Her eyes at once showed that his negligence was forgotten. Their lips met in a lingering kiss. He drew away, threw back his head, gazed at her. "Was there ever woman so lovely and fresh and pure?" he said. With impulsive daring she overcame her virginal shyness, flung her arms round his neck, and kissed him. "I love you," she murmured, blushing. "When I woke up and found you gone—it was dreadfully lonely." She had dropped into the somewhat babyish manner natural to any affectionate nature in certain moods and circumstances. It seemed especially natural to her, on account of her size and her exuberant gayety; and she had been assuming it with him in all its charming variations from the beginning of their engagement because it was the manner that pleased him best. "Next time, you'll wake me and take me along—won't you?"

He patted her. "Bless the baby! A lot of work I'd do."

"I'm going to help you. I can soon learn."

He shook his head in smiling negative. "You're going to be the dearest, sweetest wife a man ever had," said he. "And always your womanly