It was twenty months since Price had received a bill, and secret inquiries during the past two had satisfied him that his wife's name was written in the books of no shop in San Francisco that she would condescend to visit.

Therefore, this maddening but intangible barrier had nothing to do with a change of habit that had not caused an hour of tears and sulks.

Helene had a quick temper but a gay and sweet disposition, normally high spirits, little apparent selfishness, and a naive adoration of masculine superiority and strength; altogether, with her high bred beauty and her dignity in public, an enchanting creature and an ideal wife for a busy man of inherited social position and no small degree of pride.
But all this lovely equipment was blurred, almost obscured at times, by the shadow that he was beginning to liken to the San Francisco fogs that drifted through the Golden Gate and settled down into the deep hollows of the Marin hills; moving gently but restlessly even there, like ghostly floating tides.

He could see them from his library window, where he often finished his afternoon's work with his secretaries.
But the fog drifted back to the Pacific, and the shadow that encompassed his wife did not, or rarely.

It chilled their ardors, even their serene domesticity.