VI

Helene's social success was immediate and permanent. Californians rarely

do things by halves. Society was no exception. She had "walked off" with

the most desirable man in town, but they were good gamblers. When they

lost they paid. She had married into "their set." They had accepted her.

She was one of them. No secret order is more loyal to its initiates.

During that first year and a half of ideal happiness Ruyler, in what

leisure he could command, found Helene's rapidly expanding mind as

companionable as he had hoped; and the girlish dignity she never lost,

for all her naivete and vivacity, gratified his pride and compelled, upon

their second brief visit to New York, even the unqualified approval of

his family.

She had inherited all the subtle adaptability of her father's race,

nothing of the cold and rigid narrowness of her mother's class. Price had

feared that her lively mind might reveal disconcerting shallows, but

these little voids were but the divine hiatuses of youth. He sometimes

wondered just how strong her character was. There were times when she

showed a pronounced inclination for the line of least resistance ... but

her youth ... her too sheltered bringing up ... those drab cramped

years ... no wonder....

He was glad on the whole that his was the part to mold. Nevertheless, he

had his inconsistencies. Unlike many men of strong will and driving

purpose he liked strength of character and pronounced individuality in

women; and he, too, had had fleeting visions of what life might have been

had Flora Thornton entered life twenty years later. He had been quite

sincere in telling her that the young stranger reminded him of the most

powerful personality he had met in California, and he believed that

within a reasonable time Helene would be as variously cultivated, as

widely, if less erratically developed. But was there any such insurgent

force in her depths? It was not within the possibilities that at any time

in her life Flora Thornton had been pliable.

A man had little time to study his wife in California these days. Or at

any time? He sometimes wondered. Certainly happy marriages were rare and

divorces many. Fine weather nearly all the year round played the deuce

with domesticity, and his business could not be neglected for the long

vacation abroad to which they both had looked forward so ardently.

Sometimes, even before this vague gray mist had risen between them, he

had had moments of wondering whether he knew his wife at all. How could a

man know a woman who did not yet know herself? He sighed and wished he

had more time to explore the uncharted seas of a woman's soul.




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