These two felt unutterably bound to each other.  Cowperwood, once he came to understand her, fancied that he had found the one person with whom he could live happily the rest of his life.  She was so young, so confident, so hopeful, so undismayed.  All these months since they had first begun to reach out to each other he had been hourly contrasting her with his wife.  As a matter of fact, his dissatisfaction, though it may be said to have been faint up to this time, was now surely tending to become real enough.  Still, his children were pleasing to him; his home beautiful.  Lillian, phlegmatic and now thin, was still not homely.  All these years he had found her satisfactory enough; but now his dissatisfaction with her began to increase.  She was not like Aileen—­not young, not vivid, not as unschooled in the commonplaces of life.  And while ordinarily, he was not one who was inclined to be querulous, still now on occasion, he could be.  He began by asking questions concerning his wife’s appearance—­irritating little whys which are so trivial and yet so exasperating and discouraging to a woman.  Why didn’t she get a mauve hat nearer the shade of her dress?  Why didn’t she go out more?  Exercise would do her good.  Why didn’t she do this, and why didn’t she do that?  He scarcely noticed that he was doing this; but she did, and she felt the undertone—­the real significance—­and took umbrage.

“Oh, why—­why?” she retorted, one day, curtly.  “Why do you ask so many questions?  You don’t care so much for me any more; that’s why.  I can tell.”

He leaned back startled by the thrust.  It had not been based on any evidence of anything save his recent remarks; but he was not absolutely sure.  He was just the least bit sorry that he had irritated her, and he said so.

“Oh, it’s all right,” she replied.  “I don’t care.  But I notice that you don’t pay as much attention to me as you used to.  It’s your business now, first, last, and all the time.  You can’t get your mind off of that.”

He breathed a sigh of relief.  She didn’t suspect, then.

But after a little time, as he grew more and more in sympathy with Aileen, he was not so disturbed as to whether his wife might suspect or not.  He began to think on occasion, as his mind followed the various ramifications of the situation, that it would be better if she did.  She was really not of the contentious fighting sort.  He now decided because of various calculations in regard to her character that she might not offer as much resistance to some ultimate rearrangement, as he had originally imagined.  She might even divorce him.  Desire, dreams, even in him were evoking calculations not as sound as those which ordinarily generated in his brain.