“That’s right. Run them down. Have friends of your own, you lunch with and play cards with, and golf with, and have a regular good time with, but don’t let me have anybody! Myrtle says some men are like that—jealous even of their wives’ women friends. Oh, Stephen, why will you try to take the joy out of everything so? Why don’t you let me have a little fun in life without all this argument? I get sick to death of it.”

“Oh, very well.”

“Yes, you say ‘very well,’ but you’ll be at me again tomorrow. I don’t find fault with you, do I?”

“No.”

“Well—?”

Stephen was silent.

“That’s right, now get glum and sulky, and don’t say anything to me but stiff formal things for a week. Oh, gracious!”

Stella could forget all about such a discussion as this by the following morning. “I’m blessed with a good disposition,” she was fond of boasting. “Dad used to say it was almost impossible to worry me cross when I was a kid. Come on, Stephen, cheer up.”

If Stephen didn’t, if he couldn’t “cheer up,” Stella would fling down her comb, or slam a door, and five minutes later be heard humming a song in her bath. Stephen suffered.

6

“WHY DID YOU ever marry me, Stella?” once he inquired despairingly.

“Why, because I was crazy about you. I thought you were perfectly great.”

“How can a woman be crazy about a man—care for a man, and not be willing to adapt herself somewhat to him, to give up a few things for him?”

“How would it do for you to do a little of the adapting, Stephen, a little of the giving up? Why did you ever marry me?” she retorted.

Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

1

IT WAS AN ironic coincidence that the same cause that killed the last bit of struggling love Stephen had for Stella (if indeed love it had ever been) should also bind him to her more closely.

Suddenly in the midst of Stella’s first year of social success in Milhampton, she found herself facing the dismaying possibility that she might soon become a mother. She didn’t want to! Not now! It would be a terrible tragedy just when she was making headway in Milhampton. It would wipe her off the social map for a whole year, or more! When the possibility became a certainty, it seemed to Stephen that all there was left sweet and fine in Stella disintegrated suddenly and completely into futile and unbeautiful protest.

She fought the frightening fact day after day, night after night, with violent attacks of crying, with uncontrolled fits of rage, self-pity, and despair, as if in frenzied resistance lay possible escape. Her one desire was to escape—somehow, anyhow, from the horrible trap that had snapped on her, and held her in its grasp.