and reserve heretofore, but now that he chose to emerge, now that he had consented no longer to faire la police over his wife in that farcical fashion, it could do no harm mercifully to pardon his past stupidity.
As for Millicent, she deported herself, through all this time, with a childlike ecstasy as naïf as it was delightfully becoming. She wore the new robes that deft milliners wrought for her with a grace the weariest cynic could not deny her. The neat-cut, costly satins and velvets which now ensheathed her supple form and resolved their elegance and sumptuousness into folds which some intuitive tact taught her how to irreproachably dispose, borrowed a new beauty from her own instead of augmenting it. She became a popular personage at once, because of her sincere gladness to move amid the light and color of gay assemblages and the entire sincerity of enjoyment which made her personal loveliness universally attract. Demotte went with her everywhere, bored to the soul, hating the new life he had forced himself to accept, but cultivating a tolerance of the whole ordeal for which I knew that severe remorseful pangs were responsible.
And I—how did I know this? For the simple reason that I followed Millicent and her husband into the thick of their recent exploit. It was no more difficult for me to do so than the mere leaving of paste-board at certain houses; for I was that absurd personage, an American gentleman with an inherited right to hold himself at pleasure an active nabob or a capricious recluse. Millicent and I met each other constantly at entertainments, nowadays. She was always infallibly cordial to me, no matter how many devotees surrounded her. She would sometimes laughingly tell me that I was quite as much thought of as she, and that I helped to swell her power through my faithful adherence. But in my heart I knew this either a grievous mistake or else a mere friendly compliment born of that ever undisguised liking which had so often raised itself before me as the mockery of my changeless passion.
It had been a gay season, but it waned at last, toward Lent, and I was certain that Demotte drew a vast sigh of relief as it did so. One evening, after Lent had set in, I presented myself at the Second Avenue house, prepared to accompany himself and Millicent to the opera. I was a little late; my own brougham had driven to the door and had met Demotte's carriage, waiting there. I was prepared, on entering, to find Millicent in a humorously scolding mood, and Demotte, as usual nowadays, neutrally quiescent. But I had scarcely passed into the drawing-room before it became apparent to me that some serious disturbance had taken place between husband and wife. Millicent rose from a sofa to greet me, her fallen opera-cloak blending with her festal draperies. Demotte stood not far off, leaning against the mantel.
"We are not going to the opera," Millicent said, as she gave me her hand.
"Not going?" I echoed. The "why?" that I was about to add died on my lips; I had seen Demotte's clouded face. But it was he who next spoke.
"Millicent considers me a tremendous tyrant," he said grimly. "That, I believe, is why she has decided on not going."
