"No, I thank you," replied Irene, curtly. "I don't incline to the
laughing mood, just now."
"Laughing is contagious," suggested Hartley.
"I shall not take the infection to-night." And she balanced her
little head with the perpendicularity of a plumb-line.
"Can't I persuade you?" He was in a real good-humor, and smiled as
he said this.
"No, sir. You may waive both argument and persuasion. I am in
earnest."
"And when a woman is in earnest you might as well essay to move the
Pillars of Hercules."
"You might as well in my case," answered Irene, without any
softening of tone or features.
"Then I shall not attempt, after a hard day's work, a task so
difficult. I am in a mood for rest and quiet," said the young
husband.
"Perhaps," he resumed, after a little pause, "you may feel somewhat
musical. There is to be a vocal and instrumental concert to-night.
What say you to going there? I think I could enjoy some good
singing, mightily."
Irene closed her lips firmly, and shook her head.
"Not musically inclined this evening?"
"No," she replied.
"Got a regular stay-at-home feeling?"
"Yes."
"Enough," said Hartley, with unshadowed good-humor, "we will stay at
home."
And he sung a snatch of the familiar song--"There's no place like
home," rising, as he did so, from the table, and offering Irene his
arm. She could do no less than accept the courtesy, and so they went
up to their cozy sitting-room arm-in-arm--he chatty, and she almost
silent.
"What's the matter, petty?" he asked, in a fond way, after trying
for some time, but in vain, to draw her out into pleasant
conversation. "Ain't you well to-night?"
Now, so far as her bodily state was concerned, Irene never felt
better in her life. So she could not plead indisposition.
"I feel well," she replied, glancing up into her husband's face in a
cold, embarrassed kind of way.
"Then your looks belie your condition--that's all. If it isn't the
body, it must be the mind. What's gone wrong, darling?"
The tenderness in Hartley's tones was genuine, and the heart of
Irene leaped to his voice with a responsive throe. But was he not
her master and tyrant? How that thought chilled the sweet impulse!
"Nothing wrong," she answered, with a sadness of tone which she was
unable to conceal. "But I feel dull, and cannot help it."
"You should have gone with me to laugh with Matthews. He would have
shaken all these cobwebs from your brain. Come! it is not yet too
late."
But the rebel spirit was in her heart; and to have acceded to he
husband's wishes would have been to submit herself to control.
"You must excuse me," she replied. "I feel as if home were the
better place for me to-night."