Mrs. Bowen did not often see him when he went to call upon Imogene, and she was not at more than two or three of the parties. Mrs. Amsden came to chaperon the girl, and apparently suffered an increase of unrequited curiosity in regard to his relations to the Bowen household, and the extraordinary development of his social activity. Colville not only went to all those evening parties, but he was in continual movement during the afternoon at receptions and at “days,” of which he began to think each lady had two or three. Here he drank tea, cup after cup, in reckless excitement, and at night when he came home from the dancing parties, dropping with fatigue, he could not sleep till toward morning. He woke at the usual breakfast-hour, and then went about drowsing throughout the day till the tea began again in the afternoon. He fell asleep whenever he sat down, not only in the reading-room at Viesseux’s, where he disturbed the people over their newspapers by his demonstrations of somnolence, but even at church, whither he went one Sunday to please Imogene, and started awake during the service with the impression that the clergyman had been making a joke. Everybody but Imogene was smiling. At the café he slept without scruple, selecting a corner seat for the purpose, and proportioning his buonamano to the indulgence of the giovane. He could not tell how long he slept at these places, but sometimes it seemed to him hours.
One day he went to see Imogene, and while Effie Bowen stood prattling to him as he sat waiting for Imogene to come in, he faded light-headedly away from himself on the sofa, as if he had been in his corner at the café. Then he was aware of someone saying “ ’Sh!” and he saw Effie Bowen, with her finger on her lip, turned toward Imogene, a figure of beautiful despair in the doorway. He was all tucked up with sofa pillows, and made very comfortable, by the child, no doubt. She slipped out, seeing him awake, so as to leave him and Imogene alone, as she had apparently been generally instructed to do, and Imogene came forward.
“What is the matter, Theodore?” she asked patiently. She had taken to calling him Theodore when they were alone. She owned that she did not like the name, but she said it was right she should call him by it, since it was his. She came and sat down beside him, where he had raised himself to a sitting posture, but she did not offer him any caress.
“Nothing,” he answered. “But this climate is making me insupportably drowsy; or else the spring weather.”
“Oh no; it isn’t that,” she said, with a slight sigh. He had left her in the middle of a german at three o’clock in the morning, but she now looked as fresh and lambent as a star. “It’s the late hours. They’re killing you.”
Colville tried to deny it; his incoherencies dissolved themselves in a yawn, which he did not succeed in passing for a careless laugh.
“It won’t do,” she said, as if speaking to herself; “no, it won’t do.”
“Oh yes, it will,” Colville protested. “I don’t mind being up. I’ve been used to it all my life on the paper. It’s just some temporary thing. It’ll come all right.”
“Well, no matter,” said Imogene. “It makes you ridiculous, going to all those silly places, and I’d rather give it up.”
The tears began to steal down her cheeks, and Colville sighed. It seemed to him that somebody or other was always crying. A man never quite gets used to the tearfulness of women.
“Oh, don’t mind it,” he said. “If you wish me to go, I will go! Or die in the attempt,” he added, with a smile.
Imogene did not smile with him. “I don’t wish you to go any more. It was a mistake in the first place, and from this out I will adapt myself to you.”
“And give up all your pleasures? Do you think I would let you do that? No, indeed! Neither in this nor in anything else. I will not cut off your young life in any way, Imogene—not shorten it or diminish it. If I thought I should do that, or you would try to do it for me, I should wish I had never seen you.”
“It isn’t that. I know how good you are, and that you would do anything for me.”
“Well, then, why don’t you go to these fandangoes alone? I can see that you have me on your mind all the time, when I’m with you.”
“Oughtn’t I?”
“Yes, up to a certain point, but not up to the point of spoiling your fun. I will drop in now and then, but I won’t try to come to all of them, after this; you’ll get along perfectly well with Mrs. Amsden, and I shall be safe from her for a while. That old lady has marked me for her prey: I can see it in her glittering eyeglass. I shall fall asleep some evening between dances, and then she will get it all out of me.”
Imogene still refused to smile. “No; I shall give it up. I don’t think it’s well, going so much without Mrs. Bowen. People will begin to talk.”
“Talk?”
“Yes; they will begin to say that I had better stay with her a little more, if she isn’t well.”
“Why, isn’t Mrs. Bowen well?” asked Colville, with trepidation.
“No; she’s miserable. Haven’t you noticed?”
“She sees me so seldom now. I thought it was only her headaches—”
“It’s much more than that. She seems to be
