The Mask | Page 7

itself to considering her as one apart--a beautiful, chaste Juno whose ideals all must respect. Indeed, the only thing with which she could be reproached was that she was in love with her husband--the unpardonable sin in society's eyes--but seeing who it was and despairing of ever changing her point of view, society forgave her.
It never occurred to Helen that she was different in any way from other women. She did not see how it was possible for a woman to be untrue to the man whose name she bore and still retain her self-respect. The day she ceased to love her husband she would leave him forever. To her way of thinking, it was shocking to go on living with a man merely because it suited one's convenience and comfort. She knew married women who did not care for their husbands, some actually detested the men they had married, and had always held in horror the intimate relation which marriage sanctioned. She felt sorry for such women, but secretly she despised them. They alone were to blame. Had they not married knowing well that there was no real affection in their hearts for the men to whom they gave themselves? The cynicism and effrontery of young girls regarding marriage particularly revolted her. Eager for wealth and social position, they offered themselves with brazen effrontery in the matrimonial market, immodestly displaying their charms to the lecherous, covetous eyes of blas��, degenerate men. Any question of attachment, love, affection was never for a moment considered. The idea that a man could be even considered unless he were able to provide a fine establishment was laughed to scorn. The girls were all men hunters but they hunted only rich men. They called the feeling they experienced for the man they caught in their toils "love." They meant something quite different. To a girl of Helen's ideas, such manoeuvers were shocking. To her the marriage tie was something sacred, a relation not to be entered into lightly. Kenneth was rich, it was true, but she would have loved him none the less had he been one of his own fifteen dollar a week clerks. When they were married and the romance was over, he stopped playing the lover to devote himself to the more serious business of making money, but with her, time, instead of dimming the flame, only caused it to burn the brighter. This man whom she had married was her only thought. In him centered every interest of her life.
A muffled outburst of profanity from Kenneth aroused her from her reveries.
"That's always the way when one's in a hurry," he exclaimed petulantly. "Ring for Fran?ois. Why the devil isn't he here?"
Quickly, Helen sprang up from the trunk and touched an electric button.
"What's the matter, dear?" she asked.
She approached her husband who, at the far end of the room, was red in the face from the unusual exertion of trying to coax the buckle of a strap into a hole obviously out of reach. He pulled and strained till the muscles stood out on his neck and brawny arms like whipcord, and still the obstinate buckle declined to be coerced. The more it resisted, the more determined he was to make it obey. Go in it must, if sheer strength would do it. The vice-president of the Americo-African Mining Company was no weakling. A six-foot athlete and captain of the Varsity football team in his college days, his muscles had been toughened in a thousand lively scrimmages and in later life plenty of golf, rowing and other out-of-door sports had kept him in condition. When he pulled hard something had to give way. It did in this instance. There was a tearing, rending sound and the strap broke off short. With a gesture of despair he turned to his wife as men are wont to do when in trouble.
"Wouldn't that jar you?" he cried, as he threw the broken strap away. "What the deuce am I going to do now?"
"Why don't you let Fran?ois attend to such things?" answered his wife calmly. "He understands packing so much better than you. You're so strong, you break everything."
She looked fondly at her husband's tall, athletic figure. He turned to her with a smile.
"I guess you're right," he said. "But where the devil is Fran?ois?"
"I don't know. I sent him downstairs to tell the cook to have some nice sandwiches ready when you come home after the director's meeting tonight, but that's an hour ago----"
His ill humor gone, Kenneth looked up and smiled at her. Putting his arm about her, fondly he said:
"Dear little wife. You're always thinking of the comfort of others. You're the most unselfish, the most adorable, the most----"
"Stop, Kenneth, don't be foolish or I shall believe you----"
His face red from