The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts’. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions, and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes the bow and arrow held their own.

Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought home to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previous winter, after he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellow house with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Then there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey stepper for May’s brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), and the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library, which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out as he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and “sincere” arm-chairs and tables. At the Century he had found Winsett again, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own set; and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given to dining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional evening at the Opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed a fairly real and inevitable sort of business.

But Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere of unmitigated holiday-making. Archer had tried to persuade May to spend the summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called, appropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy Bostonians and Philadelphians were camping in “native” cottages, and whence came reports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existence amid woods and waters. He dreamed of blissful hours of lovemaking with his new bride. During those wonderful moments, she was open and uninhibited and carefree—not the socially conscious, frivolous child who maintained an icy distance. In Newland’s mind, prancing off to the wilderness was sure to prove exciting, but only if May allowed herself to behave the way she did behind closed doors. His hope was that a change of scenery would teach his young wife to carry the confidence and maturity that she showed in the bedroom over to their ordinary day.

But the Wellands always went to Newport, where they owned one of the square boxes on the cliffs, and their son-in-law could adduce no good reason why he and May should not join them there when faced with his in-laws steadfast expectations. He was certainly not able to speak of intimate matters, of his manly desires. As Mrs. Welland rather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worthwhile for May to have worn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to be allowed to wear them; and this argument was of a kind to which Archer had as yet found no answer.