I

Price Ruyler knew that many secrets had been inhumed by the earthquake

and fire of San Francisco and wondered if his wife's had been one of

them. After all, she had been born in this city of odd and whispered

pasts, and there were moments when his silent mother-in-law suggested a

past of her own.

That there was a secret of some sort he had been progressively convinced

for quite six months. Moreover, he felt equally sure that this impalpable

gray cloud had not drifted even transiently between himself and his wife

during the first year and a half of their marriage. They had been

uncommonly happy; they were happy yet ... the difference lay not in the

quality of Helene's devotion, enhanced always by an outspoken admiration

for himself and his achievements, but in subtle changes of temperament

and spirits.

She had been a gay and irresponsible young creature when he married her,

so much so that he had found it expedient to put her on an allowance and

ask her not to ran up staggering bills in the fashionable shops; which

she visited daily, as much for the pleasure of the informal encounter

with other lively and irresponsible young luminaries of San Francisco

society as for the excitement of buying what she did not want.

He had broached the subject with some trepidation, for they had never had

a quarrel; but she had shown no resentment whatever, merely an eager

desire to please him. She even went directly down to the Palace Hotel and

reproached her august parent for failing to warn her that a dollar was

not capable of infinite expansion.

But no wonder she had been extravagant, she told Ruyler plaintively. It

had been like a fairy tale, this sudden release from the rigid

economies of her girlhood, when she had rarely had a franc in her

pocket, and they had lived in a suite of the old family villa on one

of the hills of Rouen, Madame Delano paying her brother for their

lodging, and dressing herself and Helene with the aid of a half

paralyzed seamstress with a fiery red nose. Ma foi! It was the

nightmare of her youth, that nose and that croaking voice. But the

woman had fingers, and a taste! And her mother could have concocted a

smart evening frock out of an old window curtain.

But the petted little daughter was never asked to go out and buy a spool

of thread, much less was she consulted in the household economies. All

she noticed was that her clothes were smarter than Cousin Marthe's, who

had a real dressmaker, and was subject to fits of jealous sulks. No

wonder that when money was poured into her lap out in this wonderful

California she had assumed that it was made only to spend.




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