She laughed with evident pleasure. “Well!”

He took a match out of his pocket and, kneeling down on the hearth,

lighted the small pine logs which were piled up there. A sudden flame

brought into bold relief his sinewy frame and clear-cut features as he

leaned forward—the light, waving hair pushed upward, and the strong set

mouth and chin. His wife drew a low chair forward by him and put out her

bare feet in their pink Turkish slippers to catch the warmth. When he

turned, the flame had caught her also in its flaring light, and rose and

wavered and fell around her.

It used to be the fashion in the old story-books to represent the

parents of even the youngest infant as people of mature age and didactic

wisdom; to be a mother was to be removed forever from the precincts of

social vanities or young and active living. One can find in the books of

fifty years ago the picture of a woman, austerely middle-aged, with

banded hair, a cap, a long nose, and a kerchief, dispensing advice to

abnormally small children in trousers and pinafores who cluster at her

knees. Lois Alexander would have been a revelation to that epoch; with

her white lace-frilled draperies wrapped around her and her

pink-slippered feet, she might have served as a distinctly modern

illustration of youthful motherhood.

She was not very tall, but gave the effect of height in her bearing. Her

form was beautifully rounded and her throat and neck were of a soft

whiteness peculiarly their own. Everything about her was richly

colored—her lips, her cheeks, her blue eyes, which had a certain rayed

starriness in them, and her brown hair, which, when it lay, as now,

unfastened, fell in large loose curls upon her bosom. Her usual

expression was somewhat pensive and absorbed, as if she were thinking of

herself; but when she smiled she seemed to think only of you.

She put a soft detaining hand on his shoulder as he bent forward

watching the blaze in a new absorption.

“I know you’re thinking of the new venture.”

“Yes; it’s a good deal to think of.”

“I should say so!” She caught her breath admiringly. “I listened to you

and those men talking to-night until I couldn’t stand it a moment

longer. I should think those figures would drive you crazy!”

“They won’t drive me crazy if I can make them come out as I wish,” said

Justin emphatically.

“But I thought it was all settled that you _could_!”

“Oh, yes—on paper. Everything looks all right there—and it shall be,

too! But when you get to working things out in real life you must allow

for differences. I know the machine is good—I don’t take any chances on

that, as I told you before; but there are new machines put on the market

all the time to compete with; we haven’t a monopoly.”

“Well, you can make your prices lower than the others,” she suggested

brightly.

“Oh, yes, of course,” he explained with patience, “but if we put prices

too low there’s no profit. We may have to do it for a while, though;

we’ve got to be seen doing business, even if it’s at a loss. That’s what

the fifty thousand’s for—to tide us over just such a time.”

“It is a great deal to have to pay back,” she said anxiously, leaning

forward to throw a small log on the fire. “I don’t like you to saddle

yourself with such a debt. I don’t like it!”

What weighed on him most—the personal care and responsibility—made no

impression on her; she had a loyal and wifely faith in his large

ability; but the thought of the money, which filled him only with the

exhilaration of sufficient capital, made her uneasy. She had all a

woman’s horror of debt. What is to a man a very usual and legitimate

business resource seemed to her almost a disgrace.

“I wish you could get along without the money.”

“I’m glad enough to have it,” he replied. “Rest assured, Lois, if they

didn’t think me worth it they wouldn’t lend it to me—they expect big

interest on their investment.”

“And is our living to come out of it, too?”

“Oh, yes—until there’s an income.”

“How much will you take?”

“Oh, no fixed sum—just as little as we can get along with at present.

We’ll go slowly, Lois, and economize all we can, until we get on our

feet.”

“Indeed, I’ll economize!” She clasped her hands earnestly. “There are

only a few things to be bought first; things, you know, that we can’t do

without. After that we’ll need next to nothing. This rug, for

instance—it’s in rags, I’m ashamed to bring anyone up here—but that

won’t cost much, and we’ve _got_ to get one for the front hall; it isn’t

decent. And I’ll have to buy the children’s winter clothing before it

gets too cold. Zaidee needs a new coat. She has such long legs, her last

year’s coat looks like a ruffle.”

“Oh, of course, get what is needed,” said the father resignedly. “Some

money will have to be spent, necessarily, but make it as little as you

can.”

She felt the cessation of interest in his tone, and tried to get back

her lost ground.

“Ah, don’t let’s leave the fire yet,” she pleaded, as he made a motion

to rise. “I want to sit here a few minutes more, and it’s going to blaze

up so beautifully! It’s so seldom that we ever really get a chance to

talk together. It seems wonderful that everything is to change in this

way. I’ve hated so to think of you tied to that old treadmill—a man

with your capabilities! I knew that if it had not been for the children

and for me you would have left the place long ago.”

“If it were not for the children and for you I might not be leaving it

now,” he answered gently.

“Yes, I know. It’s been dreadfully hard to make both ends meet lately,

I’ve seen how worried you were. Dear, I don’t want to be a drag; I want

to be an inspiration. Promise to let me help you all I can.”

“You always help me.”

“Ah, no, I don’t; _I_ feel it, though you may not.” She paused, and went

on again with a tremulous note in her voice: “Justin, I miss you so much

sometimes; there are days and days when I feel as if I hadn’t seen you

at all!”

“You see all there is of me,” said Justin tersely. “How many times a

year do I go out of an evening without you?”

“Yes, I know that; but when I am alone all day with the children and the

servants, I think of so many things that I want to say to you when you

come home, and then you are tired, or sleepy, or want to read, and I

don’t get any chance at all. You _never_ ask me anything, or notice when

I don’t feel well; yesterday I had such a headache I could hardly sit

up, and you never noticed. Do you think, Justin, that you could feel ill

and I not know it?”

“No, I suppose not,” said Justin. “But I’m afraid you’ll have another

headache to-morrow if you sit up any longer, Lois.”

“No, I will not!” She tossed her head gayly, and also tossed away a

bright tear that was ready to fall. Her husband hated to see her cry, it

filled him with a cold and unreasoning wrath at which she blindly

wondered but was forced to accept as a fact. She knew that she had

broken up many happy hours by weeping inopportunely.

She tried to speak evenly as she said: “I didn’t mean that to sound as

if I were complaining. I think and think how I can make

things—different.”

She pushed her white, blue-veined feet, in their pink slippers, nearer

to the blaze, and he put his hand over them protectingly. Although she

had been married for nearly eight years, she had not lost a certain

girlish trick of modesty, and blushed sweetly at his action and his

gaze.

It was a remarkable thing that while marriage after any term of years

seemed as though it could be only an antique and commonplace thing, it

still held for them the essence of novelty; they were only beginning to

act in the great drama, and not at all sure of their parts in it yet. To

live one’s own life is a matter of such poignant and absorbing interest

that it insensibly creates an individual atmosphere which obscures the

large known phenomena of nature.

Lois remembered once looking upon a man who had lost his wife after ten

years of wedded happiness, and rather wondering at the pity bestowed

upon him. Ten years! Why, it seemed like half a century—life must be

nearly over, anyway. She was beginning to realize now, with a sort of

wonder, that, as the years lengthened, one’s inner limit of youth

lengthened also; even after a decade they might still think of

themselves as young married people with a future all to come.

The tender proprietorship of Justin’s caress was more comforting to Lois

than words. They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of flame

as they rose from the red heart of the fire, her arm across his

shoulders as he leaned backward, together, yet each with a mind

preoccupied with divergent claims.

The fitful light revealed a tiny apartment, half sitting-room, half

nursery, crowded with many things, the overflow of a small household. It

was not in the least as Lois would have liked it to be, but she always

felt that it was only a temporary arrangement. There was hardly space to

walk between the wicker chairs, the sewing-table, and the covered box by

the window that served both as a seat and as a receptacle for toys—a

doll’s cradle and a horse on wheels taking up two of the corners by the

window. Across the back of one chair hung a pair of diminutive

stockings, and a basket filled with work stood on the table. The utter

domesticity of the room was hardly relieved by an unframed engraving of

the Madonna della Sedia over the wooden mantelpiece, with a

heterogeneous collection of china ornaments, nursery properties, and a

silent white clock below it. The other pictures were photographs, more

or less the worse for wear, and two colored lithographs pinned to the

wall; one of a horse carrying a boy on his back, and the other of a

bright blue-and-yellow child feeding ducks. Lying on table and floor

were picture-books and a fashion magazine. There was nothing to speak of

the spirit but the beautiful flame, a mysterious power which the hand of

man had wrested ignorantly from the elements, to burn and leap and soar

upon his hearthstone.

[Illustration: _They both sat dreamily watching the blue pinnacle of

flame_]

Lois had married her husband because of the bright honor and force of

character which attracted others, and because of his conquering love for

her. She would have felt it impossible for any girl in her senses not to

have loved Justin if he wanted her to, although he was the most

unconscious of men as to his powers in that way. She had exulted in the

thought that when other women were satisfied with mere half-men, her

lover was a Saul among his brethren; and she was not deceived in her

estimate of him—the honor, the sweetness, the force, the nobility of

disposition which made it a pain for him to make note of the defects of

those he liked, the love of her—all were there; but she was beginning

gradually to find out, after all these years, that inside that shining

outer circle of character was a whole world of thought and feeling and

preference and habit of which she knew nothing—only as time went on did

she begin to perceive the extent of it.

Those disappointing moments when they were not in accord—whole days

sometimes dropped out of the week—left a void which no caresses filled.

It hurts a woman to be forgotten both before and after she is kissed.

Lois had discovered with resentful surprise that her husband was one of

those men to whom women, in spite of the companionship of wedlock, are a

thing apart, to be mentally left and returned to. Those disappointing

moments and days were not the intimation of a transitory feeling, but

evidences of a permanent quality that grew instead of lessening. She

could hardly believe this, although she felt it, and was continually

seeking for disclaimers of what she knew. Barred indefinitely from some

larger interest, her efforts to reach her husband on the known lines

became more and more trivial, more and more futile. The first years had

held a certain floridity of living, of affection, in which one was

always striving in some way to keep up the first feelings; everything

was more or less upsetting,—marriage, babies, sickness,

housekeeping,—years when domestic situations changed their shape daily,

an evening together depending on whether the baby slept or waked; an

entertainment abroad depending not only on that, but on the event of the

servants being in or out, or on the event of having any at all. There

were summer afternoons when Lois had wept because her husband had gone

to the tennis courts, without her, and days when she had gone with him,

after elaborately arranging babies and household matters to that end;

when she had kept him waiting while she dressed, and they had started

off heated and asunder in the broiling sun to something which she did

not enjoy after all, and had kept him from enjoying. It was strange to

find that the profession of a wife and mother seemed to imply a

contradiction to everything that she had ever been before.

The meeting on the boat had brought a dear delight with it, a

revivifying warmth which here, in this intimate stillness of the night,

was lacking.