Husbands had left their wives, fathers their children, young men their sweethearts, in answer to that summons; and those who had been deaf to it she had never heard designated by any name but one.

            But all that had happened long ago; for years it had ceased to be a part of her consciousness. She had forgotten about the war; about her uncle who fell at Bull Run, and her cousin who was killed at Gettysburg. Now, of a sudden, it all came back to her, and she asked herself the question which her aunt had just put to her—why had her husband not been in the war? What else could he have been doing?

            But the very word, as she repeated it, struck her as incongruous; Corbett was a man who never did anything. His elaborate intellectual processes bore no flower of result; he simply was—but had she not hitherto found that sufficient? She rose from her seat, turning away from Mrs. Hayne.

            “I really don’t know,” she said, coldly. “I never asked him.”

              

 

 IV.
 
 

            Two weeks later the Corbetts returned to Europe. Corbett had really been charmed with his visit, and had in fact shown a marked inclination to outstay the date originally fixed for their departure. But Delia was firm; she did not wish to remain in Boston. She acknowledged that she was sorry to leave her Aunt Mary; but she wanted to get home.

            “You turncoat!” Corbett said, laughing. “Two months ago you reserved that sacred designation for Boston.”

            “One can’t tell where it is until one tries,” she answered, vaguely.

            “You mean that you don’t want to come back and live in Boston?”

            “Oh, no—no!”

            “Very well. But pray take note of the fact that I’m very sorry to leave. Under your Aunt Mary’s tutelage I’m becoming a passionate patriot.”

            Delia turned away in silence. She was counting the moments which led to their departure. She longed with an unreasoning intensity to get away from it all; from the dreary house in Mount Vernon Street, with its stencilled hall and hideous drawing-room, its monotonous food served in unappetizing profusion; from the rarefied atmosphere of philanthropy and reform which she had once found so invigorating; and most of all from the reproval of her aunt’s altruistic activities. The recollection of her husband’s delightful house in Paris, so framed for a noble leisure, seemed to mock the aesthetic barrenness of Mrs. Hayne’s environment. Delia thought tenderly of the mellow bindings, the deep-piled rugs, the pictures, bronzes, and tapestries; of the “first nights” at the Français, the eagerly discussed conferences on art or literature, the dreaming hours in galleries and museums, and all the delicate enjoyments of the life to which she was returning. It would be like passing from a hospital-ward to a flower-filled drawing-room; how could her husband linger on the threshold?

            Corbett, who observed her attentively, noticed that a change had come over her during the last two weeks of their stay in Mount Vernon Street. He wondered uneasily if she were capricious; a man who has formed his own habits upon principles of the finest selection does not care to think that he has married a capricious woman. Then he reflected that the love of Paris is an insidious disease, breaking out when its victim least looks for it, and concluded that Delia was suffering from some such unexpected attack.

            Delia certainly was suffering. Ever since Mrs. Hayne had asked her that innocent question—”Why shouldn’t your husband have been in the war?”—she had been repeating it to herself day and night with the monotonous iteration of a monomaniac. Whenever Corbett came into the room, with that air of giving the simplest act its due value which made episodes of his entrances she was tempted to cry out to him—”Why weren’t you in the war?” When she heard him, at a dinner, point one of his polished epigrams, or smilingly demolish the syllogism of an antagonist, her pride in his achievement was chilled by the question—”Why wasn’t he in the war?” When she saw him, in the street, give a coin to a crossing-sweeper, or lift his hat ceremoniously to one of Mrs. Hayne’s maid-servants (he was always considerate of poor people and servants) her approval winced under the reminder—”Why wasn’t he in the war?” And when they were alone together, all through the spell of his talk and the exquisite pervasion of his presence ran the embittering undercurrent, “Why wasn’t he in the war?”

            At times she hated herself for the thought; it seemed a disloyalty to life’s best gift. After all, what did it matter now? The war was over and forgotten; it was what the newspapers call “a dead issue.” And why should any act of her husband’s youth affect their present happiness together? Whatever he might once have been, he was perfect now; admirable in every relation of life; kind, generous, upright; a loyal friend, an accomplished gentleman, and, above all, the man she loved. Yes—but why had he not been in the war? And so began again the reiterant torment of the question. It rose up and lay down with her; it watched with her through sleepless nights, and followed her into the street; it mocked her from the eyes of strangers, and she dreaded lest her husband should read it in her own. In her saner moments she told herself that she was under the influence of a passing mood, which would vanish at the contact of her wonted life in Paris. She had become over-strung in the high air of Mrs. Hayne’s moral enthusiasms; all she needed was to descend again to regions of more temperate virtue. This thought increased her impatience to be gone; and the days seemed interminable which divided her from departure.

            The return to Paris, however, did not yield the hoped-for alleviation. The question was still with her, clamoring for a reply, and reinforced, with separation, by the increasing fear of her aunt’s unspoken verdict. That shrewd woman had never again alluded to the subject of her brief colloquy with Delia; up to the moment of his farewell she had been unreservedly cordial to Corbett; but she was not the woman to palter with her convictions.

            Delia knew what she must think; she knew what name, in the old days, Corbett would have gone by in her aunt’s uncompromising circle.

            Then came a flash of resistance—the heart’s instinct of self-preservation.