Chapter 14 - Page 2

guests were converted by the excellent of the meals.

Critical women learned at last that a competent cook can really produce better food than an incompetent one; albeit without the sanctity of the home.

"Sanctity of your bootstraps!" protested one irascible gentleman. "Such talk is all nonsense! I don't want _sacred_ meals--I want good ones--and I'm getting them, at last!"

"We don't brag about 'home brewing' any more," said another, "or 'home tailoring,' or 'home shoemaking.' Why all this talk about 'home cooking'?"

What pleased the men most was not only the good food, but its clock-work regularity; and not only the reduced bills but the increased health and happiness of their wives. Domestic bliss increased in Orchardina, and the doctors were more rigidly confined to the patronage of tourists.

Ross Warden did his best. Under the merciless friendliness of Mr. Thaddler he had been brought to see that Diantha had a right to do this if she would, and that he had no right to prevent her; but he did not like it any the better.

When she rolled away in her little car in the bright, sweet mornings, a light went out of the day for him. He wanted her there, in the home--his home--his wife--even when he was not in it himself. And in this particular case it was harder than for most men, because he was in the house a good deal, in his study, with no better company than a polite Chinaman some distance off.

It was by no means easy for Diantha, either. To leave him tugged at her heart-strings, as it did at his; and if he had to struggle with inherited feelings and acquired traditions, still more was she beset with an unexpected uprising of sentiments and desires she had never dreamed of feeling.

With marriage, love, happiness came an overwhelming instinct of service--personal service. She wanted to wait on him, loved to do it; regarded Wang Fu with positive jealousy when he brought in the coffee and Ross praised it. She had a sense of treason, of neglected duty, as she left the flower-crowned cottage, day by day.

But she left it, she plunged into her work, she schooled herself religiously.

"Shame on you!" she berated herself. "Now--_now_ that you've got everything on earth--to weaken! You could stand unhappiness; can't you stand happiness?" And she strove with herself; and kept on with her work.

After all, the happiness was presently diluted by the pressure of this blank wall between them. She came home, eager, loving, delighted to be with him again. He received her with no complaint or criticism, but always an unspoken, perhaps imagined, sense of protest. She was full of loving enthusiasm about his work, and he would dilate upon his harassed guinea-pigs and their development with high satisfaction.

But he never could bring himself to ask about her labors with any genuine