At the same time, he could not help thinking, occasionally, that Billy did sometimes mind his necessary absorption in his painting.
To himself Bertram owned that Billy was, in some ways, a puzzle to him.
Her conduct was still erratic at times.

One day he would seem to be everything to her; the next--almost nothing, judging by the ease with which she relinquished his society and substituted that of some one else: Arkwright, or Calderwell, for instance.
And that was another thing.

Bertram was ashamed to hint even to himself that he was jealous of either of those men.

Surely, after what had happened, after Billy's emphatic assertion that she had never loved any one but himself, it would seem not only absurd, but disloyal, that he should doubt for an instant Billy's entire devotion to him, and yet--there were times when he wished he _could_ come home and not always find Alice Greggory, Calderwell, Arkwright, or all three of them strumming the piano in the drawing-room! At such times, always, though, if he did feel impatient, he immediately demanded of himself: "Are you, then, the kind of husband that begrudges your wife young companions of her own age and tastes to help her while away the hours that you cannot possibly spend with her yourself ?" This question, and the answer that his better self always gave to it, were usually sufficient to send him into some florists for a bunch of violets for Billy, or into a candy shop on a like atoning errand.
As to Billy--Billy, too, was busy these days chief of her concerns being, perhaps, attention to that honeymoon of hers, to see that it did not wane.

At least, the most of her thoughts, and many of her actions, centered about that object.
Billy had the book, now--the "Talk to Young Wives." For a time she had worked with only the newspaper criticism to guide her; but, coming at last to the conclusion that if a little was good, more must be better, she had shyly gone into a bookstore one day and, with a pink blush, had asked for the book.