Temple in his wife's name, leaving its legal ownership vested in her as before.
Within a few months the extraordinary beauty and vivacity of his wife made their house on Gramercy Park the rendezvous of a brilliant group of free-lances and Bohemians. Her mother and father had moved to a house on the opposite side of the park. Men and women of genius in the world of Art and Letters who cared nought for conventions had crowded her receptions. She was nattered with the pleasant fiction that she had restored the ancient Salon of France on a nobler basis.
The increase of her social duties required more and more of her time at the dressmaker's, and left less and less for work in Gordon's congregation.
At first he had watched this social success with surprise and pride, and then with an increasing sense of uneasiness for its significance in the development of her character.
The sight of half a dozen handsome men bending over her, enchanted by her beauty, and the ring of her laughter at their wit, irritated him. He had not been actor enough to conceal from her the gleam of, worry in his eyes and the accent of fret in his voice at these functions. She observed, too, that he attended them with regularity, however important might be the work which called him outside.
He was anxious for her to cultivate a few of his intimate friends, but this crowd of strange men and women bored him.
