He would stand by her and see what could be done a little later; but this ostracism was a rather dreary thing to endure.
Besides, personally, he appeared to be becoming more and more interesting to men and to women.

The men friends he had made he retained--Addison, Bailey, Videra, McKibben, Rambaud, and others.
There were women in society, a number of them, who regretted his disappearance if not that of Aileen.

Occasionally the experiment would be tried of inviting him without his wife.

At first he refused invariably; later he went alone occasionally to a dinner-party without her knowledge.
It was during this interregnum that Cowperwood for the first time clearly began to get the idea that there was a marked difference between him and Aileen intellectually and spiritually; and that while he might be in accord with her in many ways--emotionally, physically, idyllicly--there were, nevertheless, many things which he could do alone which she could not do--heights to which he could rise where she could not possibly follow.

Chicago society might be a negligible quantity, but he was now to contrast her sharply with the best of what the Old World had to offer in the matter of femininity, for following their social expulsion in Chicago and his financial victory, he once more decided to go abroad.