throaty voice, "I'm afraid... Tell me it will be
all right, Gordon."

He looked up from the dog, startled by the unaccustomed
vibration of her tones. "Of course it
will be all right," he reassured her hastily, making
an effort to keep his impatience from his voice; "I
never guessed you were so easy scared."

"I'll try not," she returned obediently. "Mrs.
Caley says it will be all right, too." She seemed,
he thought, even younger than when he had married
her. She was absurdly girlish. It annoyed him;
it seemed, unjustly, to place too great a demand
upon his forbearance, his patience. A wife should
be able to give and take -- this was almost like having
a child to tend. Lately she had been frightened
even at the dark, she had wakened him over nothing
at all, fancies.

He decided to pay no further attention to her
imagining; and moved to the phonograph, where he
selected one of a small number of waxy cylinders.
"We'll see how the General likes music," he proclaimed.
He slipped the cylinder over a projection,
and wound the mechanism. A sharp, high scratching
responded, as painful as a pin dragging over the
ear drum, a meaningless cacophony of sounds that
gradually resolved into a thin, incredibly metallic
melody which appeared, mercifully, to come from
a distance. To this was presently joined a voice,

[[166]]

p165 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p166w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p167

v?