talked quite easily of children, so easily, indeed, that occasionally Harold caught himself wondering if he really wanted children. Somewhat self-consciously, Alice was prone to regard this excursion, this singular honeymoon, in the light of a temporary lark, a lark from which she was not deriving any excruciating amount of pleasure. In the foreground of her mind rose a picture of a somewhat more solid life in New York, with a great house and servants, friends to dinner, dinners which would be returned in due course by these friends, a box at the opera, theatres and shops to visit, calls to pay, the conventional life of a respectable matron, and, in time, her daughters. . . .
She gave voice to some of her ideals, and Harold loved to hear her talk about them. He, too, would be glad of a home, he felt, a place that was his own, in which he might sit with his pipe, slippers on feet, slackly, but respectably, comfortable. He even looked forward to the social life, of which she had given him glimpses, into which they would presumably fit. Very different, he imagined it would be, from that of Campaspe. He wondered often how the two could be sisters. He remembered how they had appeared as strangely separate entities that afternoon in the little garden on East Nineteenth Street: Alice softly acquiescent, Campaspe radiantly benedictory, hovering like a bishop over some secret glory. How simple it all had been. He had expected strife, opposition, obstruction. There
