THE TOUCHSTONE
the on fire. It was not that he was unwilling to talk to her; he felt a curious desire to be as kind as possible; but he was always forgetting that she was there. Her full bright presence, through which the currents of life flowed so warmly, had grown as tenuous as a shadow, and he saw so far beyond her.
Presently she rose and began to move about the room. She seemed to be looking for something, and he roused himself to ask what she wanted.
"Only the last number of the Horoscope. I thought I'd left it on this table." He said nothing, and she went on: "You haven't seen it?"
"No," he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in his desk.
His wife had moved to the mantelpiece. She stood facing him, and as he looked up he met her tentative gaze. "I was reading an article in it—a review of Mrs. Aubyn's Letters, she added slowly, with her deep deliberate blush.
Glennard stooped to toss his cigar into the fire. He felt a savage wish that she would not speak the other woman's name; nothing else seemed to matter.
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