He laughed again, but still uneasily.  Honora was still smiling.

“What’s got into you?” he demanded.  “I know you don’t like Rivington, but you never broke loose this way before.”

“If you stay here,” said Honora, with a new firmness, “it will be alone.  I can’t see what you want with a wife, anyway.  I’ve been thinking you over lately.  I don’t do anything for you, except to keep getting you cooks—­and anybody could do that.  You don’t seem to need me in any possible way.  All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except strangers in restaurants.  I’m worth more than that.  I think I’ll get married again.”

“Great Lord, what are you talking about?” he exclaimed when he got his breath.

“I think I’ll take a man next time,” she continued calmly, “who has something to him, some ambition.  The kind of man I thought I was getting when I took you only I shouldn’t be fooled again.  Women remarry a good deal in these days, and I’m beginning to see the reason why.  And the women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy—­much happier than they were at first.  I saw one of them at Lily Dallam’s this afternoon.  She was radiant.  I can’t see any particular reason why a woman should be tied all her life to her husband’s apron strings—­or whatever he wears —­and waste the talents she has.  It’s wicked, when she might be the making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere.”

Her husband got up.

“Jehosaphat!” he cried, “I never heard such talk in my life.”

The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of course:  the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly dissipated.  Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of determination he had never before heard—­or, at least, noticed.

There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it.  He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him.  At last he caught her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.

“Howard—­you’ll knock over the lamp—­you’ll ruin my gown—­and then you’ll have to buy me another.  I did mean it,” she insisted, holding back her head; “you’ll have to choose between Rivington and me.  It’s—­it’s an ultimatum.  There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily Dallam’s tea—­I won’t tell you who they were—­who would be glad to marry me in a minute.”

He drew her down on the arm of his chair.

“Now that Lily has a house in town,” he said weakly, “I suppose you think you’ve got to have one.”