When Bill would protest more savagely than usual, she would say,--"Now, don't be a grouch. I don't see that he can do any harm to anybody. And besides, he is no expense to you, and he's no trouble to me."
And thus it was that the once happy home became a battlefield of words--words sharp, pointed, prickly and jagged. Bill's temper, usually so sunny, became like a sheet of sand paper. His appetite fell off and his belt hooked in the fourth eyelet. But Imogene, feeding upon a fresh flirtation, bloomed again to girlish gaiety. In the presence of this suave and insinuating astral interloper she resumed all the fascinations and fripperies of the old days at the Yards.
Imogene Silesia Vanderhook had progressed.
Five years ago she had not even heard of "Occultism." Now, however, since she herself had become an Advanced Thinker, she recognized the advantages of Mysticism.
The Club of which she was President had given a good deal of time to the Ultimate Destiny of Everything. Only recently she had prepared a "Paper" on Reincarnation which had been very highly spoken of. She could now discuss the nature and uses of the Ego with the same intelligence as did other ladies of the Club. She had spent hours together figuring out how she must have been a Princess--long ago. She was now quite up in karma and entirely absorbed in the "Uplift."
It also came to be that while other ladies of Kankakee Tiddeldy-Winked and Ping-Ponged or wasted time on Diabolo, or clung to Bridge Tables, the members of the New Thought Club lost themselves in PRANAYAMA and KUMBHOKA. Even when their serious work was over they carried their enthusiasm to Five O'Clock Tea, chattering enthusiastically of PERUSA and KAIVALYA, and uttering longings for the state of NIRVIKALPA.
Mrs. Vanderhook yearned to be the first to waken KUNDELINI.
Bill, however, greatly to his wife's chagrin, had steadily declined every effort toward his own illumination. He even on one occasion used some near swear-words when Imogene begged him to contemplate his Higher Self.
It was indeed Bill's own obtuseness that finally helped to turn the tide against him. Had he been less dense and more amenable to the mystical peregrinations of the "Thoughters," perhaps this tragedy had never been.