Either course might have saved him.  One trouble with the unfortunate man was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis.  He had laboured under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had been in the Eighteenth Century—­although it is doubtful whether he had ever thought of that century.  Characteristically, he considered the troublesome affair chiefly from its business side.  His ambition, if we may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora.  And she had contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which had as yet eluded him.  And, above all,—­if the idea be put a little more crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected.  Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might some day pack up and leave him.  One never could tell what a woman would do in these days.  Les sacrees femmes.

We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband’s mental processes.  She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom.  With instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.

An invitation to dine with the Dallams’, in their own house, arrived a day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there.  Although Lily had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of unusual warmth.  She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much to talk to her about which couldn’t be written on account of a splitting headache.  In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam’s front door at a few minutes after seven o’clock.  Honora paused in the spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement kitchens.  The Third Avenue Elevated, “so handy for Sid,” roared across the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb.  And out of it burst a resplendent lady—­Mrs. Dallam.

“Oh, it’s you, Honora,” she cried.  “Am I late?  I’m so sorry.  But I just couldn’t help it.  It’s all Clara Trowbridge’s fault.  She insisted on my staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady Emmeline.  She’s sweet.  I’ve seen her eight times.”  Here she took Honora’s arm, and faced her towards the street.  “What do you think of my turnout?  Isn’t he a darling?”