She allowed the pleasant influences of the passing moment to have their full effect upon her husband, and she continued her leading up to the subject by those easy and apparently unrelated sequences which none but a diplomat could have managed.
"Thank you, dear," she said, when Harry resumed his seat.

"The air is cold but very clear and pleasant out to-day," she continued.
"It looks so," said Harry.
"Still, if I were you, I think I would not go out; it might make your cold worse," said Ida.
"No, I think it would be full as well for me to stay in to-day," replied Harry happily.

He hemmed a little as he spoke, realizing the tickle in his throat with rather a pleasant sense of importance than annoyance.

He stretched himself luxuriously in his chair, and gazed about the warm, perfumed, luxurious apartment.
"You have to go out to-morrow, anyway," said Ida, and she increased his sense of present comfort by that remark.
"That is so," said Harry, with a slight sigh.
Lately it had seemed harder than ever before for him to start early in the black winter mornings and hurry for his train.

Then, too, he had what he had never had before, a sense of boredom, of ennui, so intense that it was almost a pain.