If Alaire remembered the Guzman
affair at all, or if she had suspected him of complicity in it,
time had evidently dulled her suspicions, and he was a little
sorry he had taken pains to stay away so long.
Before many days, however, he discovered that this indifference of
hers was not assumed, and that in some way or other she had
changed. Ed was accustomed, when he returned exhausted from a
debauch, to seeing in his wife's eyes a strained misery; he had
learned to expect in her bearing a sort of pitying, hopeless
resignation. But this time she was not in the least depressed. On
the contrary, she appeared happier, fresher, and younger than he
had seen her for a long time. It was mystifying. When, one
morning, he overheard her singing in her room, he was shocked.
Over this phenomenon he meditated with growing amazement and a
faint stir of resentment in his breast, for he lived a self-
centered life, considering himself the pivot upon which revolved
all the affairs of his little world. To feel that he had lost even
the power to make his wife unhappy argued that he had
overestimated his importance.
At length, having sufficiently recovered his health to begin
drinking again, he yielded one evening to an alcoholic impulse
and, just as Alaire bade him good night, clumsily sought to force
an explanation.
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