Just how Leslie Ward had drifted into his innocuous affair with the star
of "The Valley" he was not certain himself. Innocuous it certainly was.
Afterwards, looking back, he was to wonder sometimes if it had not been
precisely for the purpose it served. But that was long months after.
Not until the pattern was completed and he was able to recognize his own
work in it.

The truth was that he was not too happy at home. Nina's smart little
house on the Ridgely Road had at first kept her busy. She had spent
unlimited time with decorators, had studied and rejected innumerable
water-color sketches of interiors, had haunted auction rooms and bid
recklessly on things she felt at the moment she could not do without,
later on to have to wheedle Leslie into straightening her bank balance.
Thought, too, and considerable energy had gone into training and
outfitting her servants, and still more into inducing them to wear the
expensive uniforms and livery she provided.

But what she made, so successfully, was a house rather than a home.
There were times, indeed, when Leslie began to feel that it was not even
a house, but a small hotel. They almost never dined alone, and when they
did Nina would explain that everybody was tied up. Then, after dinner,
restlessness would seize her, and she would want to run in to the
theater, or to make a call. If he refused, she nursed a grievance all
evening.