Marian said no more, but late that evening she put her hands on his shoulders and said: “You’re not hiding something from me--something we ought to bear together?”
“Not I.” Howard smiled down into her eyes and kissed her.
His mood of reaction, of hysteria had passed. He was thinking how little in reality she had had to do with his outburst. He had not been addressing her at all, except as she seemed to him for the moment the embodiment of his self-respect--or rather, of an “absurd,” “extremely youthful” ideal of self-respect which he had “outgrown.”
A woman with a powerful personality may absorb in herself a man of strong and resolute ambition, may compel him to make her his career, to feel that to get and to keep her is all that he asks from destiny. But Marian was not such a woman.
She had come into Howard’s life at just the time and in just the way to arouse his latent passion for power and to give it a sufficient initial impetus. It was love for her that set him to lifting himself from among those who work through themselves alone to the potent few who work chiefly by directing the labour of others.
Once in this class, once having tasted the joy of power, Howard was lost to her. She was unable to restrain or direct, or even clearly to understand. She became an incident in his life. As riches came with power, they pushed him to one side in her life. Living in separate parts of a large house, leading separate lives, rarely meeting except when others were present--following the typical life of New Yorkers of fortune and fashion--they gradually grew to know little and see little and think little each of the other.
There was no abruptness in the transition. Every day had contributed its little toward widening the gap. There was no coolness, no consciousness of separation; simply the slow formation of the habit of complete independence each of the other.
His ambitions absorbed his thought and his time. To them he found her very useful. The social side--forming and keeping up friendly relations with the families whose heads were men of influence--was a vital part of his plan. But he used her just as he used every and any one else whom he found capable of contributing to his advancement; and, as she never insisted upon herself, never sought to influence or even to inquire into his course of action, she did not find him out.