Ray took her out about once a month, on one of her evenings off, never to a show and never to dance. Even if they went to a night club where there was dancing between floor shows. Ray's idea of an evening out with her was to sit at a booth in a tavern or, if he was flush, at a table in a night club, to drink and talk. To talk, that is, if he ran into friends of his whom he could get to sit in the booth or at the table with them, as generally happened. If they were alone he was generally quiet and moody as though taking her out was a duty and he resented the loss of an evening that it entailed. And in either case they generally got home earlier than he himself would have come home had he been without her.

She supposed she might as well admit it—to herself; her marriage with Ray had been, thus far at least, a failure. But she also had to admit that it was partly her fault; she should have known him longer—and got to know him better. She had known, of course, that he enjoyed gambling, but she had no objection in principle to gambling, as long as it was in moderation. Her father, whom she had loved deeply, had gambled all his life and had been a wonderful man. She just hadn't known Ray well enough to know that with him gambling wasn't a mild vice, as it had been with her father, but was an obsession, the most important thing in his life. He was addicted to it as some even more unfortunate people become addicted to morphine or heroin. He had neither the will nor the will power to stop, and she felt sorry for him.

She wondered sometimes if Ray realized by now that their marriage had been a worse mistake for him, in all probability, than it had been for her. His mistake had been not in marrying her in particular; she was probably as tolerant a wife as he could have found. It had been in marrying at all. He had been made to be a bachelor. (Spoiled by a doting mother? He never talked about his early life and all she knew about his parents was that they were dead, as were her own.) He wasn't made for married life, for domesticity. He didn't want a home of his own; he'd have been happier living in a hotel, as he had lived before marriage, even than living in a rented flat. She wondered if he'd ever thought of their getting a divorce; he'd never mentioned one, not even late this afternoon when they'd had their worst quarrel to date. Or had that been because he still hoped that she might relent and either cash in or borrow against that policy to give him the money he wanted?

She'd finished eating and got up and put her plate, knife and fork with the dirty dishes. The kitchen clock showed her that only ten minutes of her 

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