“Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house.  I had no idea that so much could be done with so narrow a front.  It’s all French, with mirrors and big white panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks.  The mirrors give it the effect of being larger than it really is.  I’ve only two criticisms to make:  it’s too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely turn around in it without knocking something down—­a photograph frame or a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs.  It was only a hideous, old-fashioned stone front when she bought it.  I suppose nobody but Reggie Farwell could have made anything out of it.”

“Who’s Reggie Farwell?” inquired her husband.

“Howard, do you really mean to say you’ve never heard of Reggie Farwell?  Lily was so lucky to get him—­she says he wouldn’t have done the house if he hadn’t been such a friend of hers.  And he was coming to the tea this afternoon—­only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn’t.  She was so disappointed.  He built the Maitlands’ house, and did over the Cecil Graingers’.  And he’s going to do our house—­some day.”

“Why not right away?” asked Howard.

“Because I’ve made up my mind to be very, very reasonable,” she replied.  “We’re going to Quicksands for a while, first.”

“To Quicksands!” he repeated.  But in spite of himself he experienced a feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.

Honora sprang to her feet.

“Get up, Howard,” she cried, “remember that we’re going out for dinner-and you’ll never be ready.”

“Hold on,” he protested, “I don’t know about this Quicksands proposition.  Let’s talk it over a little more—­”

“We’ll talk it over another time,” she replied.  “But—­remember my ultimatum.  And I am only taking you there for your own good.”

“For my own good!”

“Yes.  To get you out of a rut.  To keep you from becoming commonplace and obscure and—­and everything you promised not to be when you married me,” she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing and tantalizing fire.  “It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity.”  Wherewith she disappeared into her room and closed the door.

We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on which we have built is so firm that our own ‘lares’ and ‘penates’ are in no danger of being shaken down.  And in the same spirit we learn of other people’s domestic cataclysms.  Howard Spence had had only a slight shock, but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity.  And during the week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone:  to put down his foot like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.