Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade him a thought for anything else. He did occasionally spend a few moments in mechanical dalliance with his two playthings; but that interrupted his thoughts little if at all. By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the only really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she had grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help or even to think of expecting it. She did not judge him—at least, not consciously. She assumed he was doing the best he could, the best anyone could, the best possible. To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed to her as futile as railing against any fundamental of life—against being unable to fly instead of walk. She made occupation for herself, as will presently appear. But, after all, it was Winchie who saved her. But for him she, with no taste for "chasing about," would have withdrawn within herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and more like her mother, with barren cynicism in place of Mrs. Benedict’s equally barren religiosity. Winchie’s spirits of overflowing health, his newcomer’s delight in life were infectious and stimulating. In keeping him in perfect health—outdoors, winter and summer, and always active, she made her own health so perfect that the cheerful and hopeful side of things was rarely so much as obscured.
One evening after supper Richard, moved by the intermittent impulse to amuse himself, sought her in her sitting room, where she was reading. She always sat there in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if he became restless. He never did, but that fact no more freed her to go off duty than the absence of burglars the policeman. Dick gave her the kind of kiss that was always his signal for a "lighter hour." She merely glanced up, gave him the smile that is a matrimonial convention like "my dear," and went on with her book. Theretofore, whenever he had shown the least desire to take an hour off from that career of his, she had instantly responded. She assumed this readiness meant love; in fact, love had no part in it. She responded for two reasons, both unsuspected by her: because she did not know him well enough to have moods with him and to show them, and because refusal would have been admission of the truth of indifference to him which she had not yet discovered. That evening, for the first time, she did not respond. It was unconscious on her part, unnoted by him; yet it was the most significant event in their married life since the wedding ceremony two years and a half before.