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They always began talking about the opera, or the play, or the latest sensation in society, or some new singer or dancer or poet, and Marjorie, being new to this atmosphere and knowing so little of it, was compelled to confess that she did not know. It chagrined, dazed, and frightened her for a time. She longed to be able to grasp quickly and learn what this was all about. She wondered where she had been living — how — to have missed all this. Why, goodness gracious, these things were enough to wreck her married life! Duer would think so poorly of her — how could he help it? She watched these girls and women talking to him, and by turns, while imitating them as best she could, became envious, fearful, regretful, angry; charging, first, herself with unfitness; next, Duer with neglect; next, these people with insincerity, immorality, vanity; and lastly the whole world and life with a conspiracy to cheat her out of what was rightfully her own. Why wouldn’t these people be nice to her? Why didn’t they give of their time and patience to make her comfortable and at home — as freely, say, as they did to him? Wasn’t she his wife, now? Why did Duer neglect her? Why did they hang on his words in their eager, seductive, alluring way? She hated them and, at moments, she hated him, only to be struck by a terrifying wave of remorse and fear a moment later. What if he should grow tired of her? What if his love should change? He had seemed so enamored of her only a little while before they were married, so taken by what he called her naturalness, grace, simplicity and emotional pull.

On one of these occasions, or rather after it, when they had returned from an evening at Francis Hatton’s at which she felt that she had been neglected, she threw herself disconsolately into Duer’s arms and exclaimed:

“What’s the matter with me, Duer? Why am I so dull — so uninteresting — so worthless?”

The sound of her voice was pathetic, helpless, vibrant with the quality of an unuttered sob, a quality which had appealed to him intensely long before they were married, and now he stirred nervously.

“Why, what’s the matter with you now, Margie?” he asked sympathetically, sure that a new storm of some sort was coming.”What’s come over you? There’s nothing the matter with you. Why do you ask? Who’s been saying there is?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing — nobody! Everybody! Everything!” exclaimed Marjorie dramatically, and bursting into t
ears.”I see how it is. I see what is the matter with me. Oh! Oh! It’s because I don’t know anything, I suppose. It’s because I’m not fit to associate with you. It’s because I haven’t had the training that some people have had. It’s because I’m dull! Oh! Oh!” and a torrent of heart-breaking sobs which shook her frame from head to toe followed the outburst and declamation.

Duer, always moved by her innate emotional force and charm, whatever other lack he had reason to bewail, gazed before him in startled sympathy, astonishment, pain, wonder, for he was seeing very clearly and keenly in these echoing sounds what the trouble was. She was feeling neglected, outclassed, unconsidered, helpless; and because it was more or less true it was frightening and wounding her. She was, for the first time no doubt; beginning to feel the tragedy of life, its uncertainty, its pathos and injury, as he so often had. Hitherto her home, her relatives and friends had more or less protected her from that, for she had come from a happy home, but now she was out and away from all that and had only him. Of course she had been neglected. He remembered that now. It was partly his fault, partly the fault of surrounding conditions. But what could he do about it? What could he say? People had conditions fixed for them in this world by their own ability. Perhaps he should not have married her at all, but how should he comfort her in this crisis? How say something that would ease her soul?