As luck would have it, beyond chance guests for lunch or dinner, the Big House was empty. In vain, on the first and second days, did Dick lay out his work, or defer¹ it, so as to be ready for any suggestion from Paula to go for an afternoon swim or drive.  
He noted² that she managed always to avoid the possibility of being kissed. From her sleeping porch she called good night to him across the wide patio³. In the morning he prepared himself for her eleven o’clock greeting. Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts, with important matters concerning the forthcoming ranch⁴ sale of stock still unsettled, Dick promptly⁵ cleared out at the stroke of eleven. Up she was, he knew, for he had heard her singing. As he waited, seated at his desk, for once he was idle. A tray of letters before him continued to need his signature. He remembered this morning pilgrimage of hers had been originated by her, and by her, somewhat persistently⁶, had been kept up. And an adorable thing it was, he decided⁷—­that soft call of “Good morning, merry gentleman,” and the folding of her kimono-clad figure in his arms.
 
He remembered, further, that he had often cut that little visit short, conveying the impression to her, even while he clasped her, of how busy he was. And he remembered, more than once, the certain little wistful shadow on her face as she slipped away.
 
Quarter past eleven, and she had not come. He took down the receiver to telephone the dairy, and in the swift rush of women’s conversation, ere he hung up, he caught Paula’s voice:
 
“—­Bother Mr. Wade⁸. Bring all the little Wades⁹ and come, if only for a couple of days—­”
 
Which was very strange of Paula. She had invariably welcomed the intervals¹⁰ of no guests, when she and he were left alone with each other for a day or for several days. And now she was trying to persuade Mrs. Wade to come down from Sacramento. It would seem that Paula did not wish to be alone with him, and was seeking to protect herself with company.
 
He smiled as he realized that that morning embrace, now that it was not tendered him, had become suddenly desirable. The thought came to him of taking her away with him on one of their travel-jaunts. That would solve the problem, perhaps. And he would hold her very close to him and draw her closer. Why not an Alaskan hunting trip? She had always wanted to go. Or back to their old sailing grounds in the days of the All Away—­the South Seas. Steamers ran direct between San Francisco and Tahiti. In twelve days they could be ashore¹² in Papeete. He wondered if Lavaina still ran her boarding house, and his quick vision caught a picture of Paula and himself at breakfast on Lavaina’s porch in the shade of the mango trees.
 
He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by God, he was no coward to run away with his wife for fear of any man. And would it be fair to her to take her away possibly from where her desire lay? True, he did not know where her desire lay, nor how far it had gone between her and Graham. Might it not be a spring madness with her that would vanish with the spring? Unfortunately, he decided, in the dozen years of their marriage she had never evidenced any predisposition toward spring madness. She had never given his heart a moment’s doubt. Herself tremendously attractive to men, seeing much of them, receiving their admiration¹³ and even court, she had remained always her equable and serene¹⁴ self, Dick Forrest’s wife—­
 
“Good morning, merry gentleman.”
 
She was peeping in on him, quite naturally from the hall, her eyes and lips smiling to him, blowing him a kiss from her finger tips.
 
“And good morning, my little haughty¹⁵ moon,” he called back, himself equally his natural self.
 
And now she would come in, he thought; and he would fold her in his arms, and put her to the test of the kiss.
 
He opened his arms in invitation. But she did not enter. Instead, she startled, with one hand gathered her kimono at her breast, with the other picked up the trailing skirt as if for flight, at the same time looking apprehensively¹⁶ down the hall. Yet his keen ears had caught no sound. She smiled back at him, blew him another kiss, and was gone.
 
Ten minutes later he had no ears for Bonbright, who, telegrams in hand, startled him as he sat motionless at his desk, as he had sat, without movement, for ten minutes.
 
And yet she was happy. Dick knew her too long in all the expressions of her moods not to realize the significance of her singing over the house, in the arcades¹⁷, and out in the patio. He did not leave his workroom till the stroke of lunch; nor did she, as she sometimes did, come to gather him up on the way. At the lunch gong, from across the patio, he heard her trilling die away into the house in the direction of the dining room.
 
A Colonel Harrison Stoddard—­colonel from younger service in the National Guard, himself a retired¹⁸ merchant prince whose hobby was industrial relations and social unrest—­held the table most of the meal upon the extension of the Employers’ Liability Act so as to include agricultural laborers¹⁹. But Paula found a space in which casually²⁰ to give the news to Dick that she was running away for the afternoon on a jaunt¹¹ up to Wickenberg to the Masons.
 
“Of course I don’t know when I’ll be back—­you know what the Masons are. And I don’t dare ask you to come, though I’d like you along.”
 
Dick shook his head.
 
“And so,” she continued, “if you’re not using Saunders—­”
 
Dick nodded acquiescence²¹.
 
“I’m using Callahan this afternoon,” he explained, on the instant planning his own time now that Paula was out of the question. “I never can make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Callahan is the better driver, and of course the safest.”
 
“Perhaps that’s why,” she said with a smile. “Safety first means slowest most.”
 
“Just the same I’d back Callahan against Saunders on a speed-track,” Dick championed.
 
“Where are you bound?” she asked.
 
“Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and no-horse farm—­you know, the automatically cultivated ten-acre stunt²² I’ve been frivoling with. A lot of changes have been made that have been waiting a week for me to see tried out. I’ve been too busy. And after that, I’m going to take him over the colony—­what do you think?—­five additions the last week.”
 
“I thought the membership was full,” Paula said.
 
“It was, and still is,” Dick beamed. “But these are babies. And the least hopeful of the families had the rashness to have twins.”
 
“A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads over that experiment of yours, and I make free to say that I am merely holding my judgment—­ you’ve got to show me by bookkeeping,” Colonel Stoddard was saying, immensely pleased at the invitation to be shown over in person.
 
Dick scarcely heard him, such was the rush of other thoughts. Paula had not mentioned whether Mrs. Wad............