“I should be,” said Honora, “if you would only take the trouble to tell me about them.”  She stood up.  “Howard, can’t you see that it is making us—­grow apart?  If you won’t tell me about yourself and what you’re doing, you drive me to other interests.  I am your wife, and I ought to know—­I want to know.  The reason I don’t understand is because you’ve never taken the trouble to teach me.  I wish to lead my own life, it is true—­to develop.  I don’t want to be like these other women down here.  I—­I was made for something better.  I’m sure of it.  But I wish my life to be joined to yours, too—­and it doesn’t seem to be.  And sometimes—­I’m afraid I can’t explain it to you—­sometimes I feel lonely and frightened, as though I might do something desperate.  And I don’t know what’s going to become of me.”

He laid down his newspaper and stared at her helplessly, with the air of a man who suddenly finds himself at sea in a small boat without oars.

“Oh, you can’t understand!” she cried.  “I might have known you never could.”

He was, indeed, thoroughly perplexed and uncomfortable:  unhappy might not be too strong a word.  He got up awkwardly and put his hand on her arm.  She did not respond.  He drew her, limp and unresisting, down on the lounge beside him.

“For heaven’s sake, what is the matter, Honora?” he faltered.  “I—­I thought we were happy.  You were getting on all right, and seemed to be having a good time down here.  You never said anything about—­this.”

She turned her head and looked at him—­a long, searching look with widened eyes.

“No,” she said slowly, “you don’t understand.  I suppose it isn’t your fault.”

“I’ll try,” he said, “I don’t like to see you—­upset like this.  I’ll do anything I can to make you happy.”

“Not things, not—­not toys,” Trixton Brent’s expression involuntarily coming to her lips.  “Oh, can’t you see I’m not that kind of a woman?  I don’t want to be bought.  I want you, whatever you are, if you are.  I want to be saved.  Take care of me—­see a little more of me—­be a little interested in what I think.  God gave me a mind, and—­other men have discovered it.  You don’t know, you can’t know, what temptations you subject me to.  It isn’t right, Howard.  And oh, it is humiliating not to be able to interest one’s husband.”

“But you do interest me,” he protested.

She shook her head.

“Not so much as your business,” she said; “not nearly so much.”

“Perhaps I have been too absorbed,” he confessed.  “One thing has followed another.  I didn’t suspect that you felt this way.  Come, I’ll try to brace up.”  He pressed her to him.  “Don’t feel badly.  You’re overwrought.  You’ve exaggerated the situation, Honora.  We’ll go in on the eight o’clock train together and look at the house—­although I’m afraid it’s a little steep,” he added cautiously.

“I don’t care anything about the house,” said Honora.  “I don’t want it.”