Maurice’s charming good nature in that first boarding winter never failed.  Eleanor’s silences—­which he had long since discovered were merely empty, not mysterious—­were at least no tax on his patience; so he never once called her “silly.”  He did, occasionally, feel a faint uneasiness lest people might think she was older than he—­which was, of course, the beginning of self-consciousness as to what he had done in marrying her.  But he loved her.  He still loved her.  “She isn’t very well,” he used to defend her to Mrs. Newbolt; “she nearly killed herself, saving my life.  She’s not been the same girl since.”

“’Girl’?” said Mrs. Newbolt; “she’s exactly the same woman, only more so because she’s older.  I hope she won’t lose her figger; she’s gettin’ thin.  My dear grandmother—­she was a Dennison; fat; I can hear her now talkin’ to her daughters:  ‘Girls! Don’t lose your figgers!’ She had red hair.”

Eleanor had not lost her figure; it was still graciously erect, and with lovely curves of bosom and shoulders; but, somehow, she seemed older—­older even than she was!  Perhaps because of her efforts to be girlish?  It was as if she wore clothes she had outgrown—­clothes that were too tight and too short.  She used Maurice’s slang without its virile appropriateness; when they accepted an invitation from one of Maurice’s new acquaintances, her anxiety to be of his generation was pathetic—­or ludicrous, as one happened to look at it.  These friends of Maurice’s seemed to have innumerable interests in common with him that she knew nothing about—­and jokes!  How tired she got of their jokes, which were mostly preposterous badinage, expressed with entire solemnity and ending in yells of laughter.  Yet she tried to laugh, too; though she rarely knew what it was all about.  There is nothing which divides the generations more sharply than their ideas of humor.  But Eleanor tried, very pitifully hard, to be silly with the kind of silliness which Maurice seemed to enjoy; but, alas! she only achieved the silliness which he—­like every husband on earth!—­hated:  the silliness of small jealousies.  Once she told Maurice she didn’t like those dinner parties that his friends were always asking them to,—­“I think it’s nicer here,” she said.

And he said, cheerfully:  “Don’t go!  I don’t mind going alone.”

“I know you don’t,” she said, wistfully....  “Why can’t he be satisfied to stay at home with me?” she said once to her aunt; and Mrs. Newbolt told her why: 

“Because you don’t interest him.  Eleanor! if you want to keep that boy, urge him to go out and have a good time, without you!” Then she added some poignantly true remarks:  “My dear father used to say, ’Just as many men are faithless to their wives because their wives have plain minds, as because other women have pretty faces.’  Well, I’m afraid poor dear mother’s mind was plain; that’s why I always made an effort to talk to your uncle, and be entertainin’.  And I’ll tell you another thing—­for if I have a virtue it’s candor—­if you let him see you’re jealous, he’ll make it worth your while!  You’ve got a rip in the back seam of your waist.  No man ever keeps on lovin’ a jealous woman; he just pretends to, to keep the peace.”