I

Ruyler sighed as he heard his wife walk down the hall. There had been a
time when she came running like a child at his summons, but in these days
she walked with a leisurely dignity which to his possibly morbid ear
betrayed a certain crab-like disposition in her little high heels to slip
backward along the polished floor.

She came in smiling, however, and kissed him quickly and warmly. Her
extraordinary hair hung down in two long braids, their blue blackness
undulating among the soft folds of her thin pink negligee. For the first
time Ruyler realized that pink was Helene's favorite color; she seldom
wore anything else except white or black, and then always relieved with
pink. And why not, with that deep pink blush in her white cheeks, and the
velvet blackness of her eyes? People still raved over Helene Ruyler's
"coloring," and Price told himself once more as she stood before him, her
little head dragged back by the weight of her plaits, her slender throat
crossed by a narrow line of black velvet, that he had married one of the
most beautiful girls he had ever seen.

He was seized with a sudden sharp pang of jealousy and caught her in his
arms roughly, his gray eyes almost as black as hers.

"Tell me," he exclaimed, and the new fear almost choked him, "does any
other man interest you--the least little bit?"