ut; he would go home.

Carrie was surprised to see him at a quarter of three.

"It's a miserable day out," was all he said. Then he took off his coat
and changed his shoes.

That night he felt a cold coming on and took quinine. He was feverish
until morning, and sat about the next day while Carrie waited on him.
He was a helpless creature in sickness, not very handsome in a
dull-coloured bath gown and his hair uncombed. He looked haggard about
the eyes and quite old. Carrie noticed this, and it did not appeal to
her. She wanted to be good-natured and sympathetic, but something about
the man held her aloof.

Toward evening he looked so badly in the weak light that she suggested
he go to bed.

"You'd better sleep alone," she said, "you'll feel better. I'll open
your bed for you now."

"All right," he said.

As she did all these things, she was in a most despondent state.

"What a life! What a life!" was her one thought.

Once during the day, when he sat near the radiator, hunched up and
reading, she passed through, and seeing him, wrinkled her brows. In the
front room, where it was not so warm, she sat by the window and cried.
This was the life cut out for her, was it? To live cooped up in a small
flat with some one who was out of work, idle, and indifferent to her.
She was merely a servant to him now, nothing more.

This crying made her eyes red, and when, in preparing his bed, she
lighted the gas, and, having prepared it, called him in, he noticed the
fact.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked, looking into her face. His voice
was hoarse and his unkempt head only added to its grewsome quality.

"Nothing," said Carrie, weakly.

"You've been crying," he said.

"I haven't, either," she answered.

It was not for love of him, that he knew.

"You needn't cry," he said, getting into bed. "Things will come out all
right."

In a day or two he was up again, but rough weather holding, he stayed
in. The Italian newsdealer now delivered the morning papers, and these
he read assiduously. A few times after that he ventured out, but meeting
another of his old-time friends, he began to feel uneasy sitting about
hotel corridors.

Every day he came home early, and at last made no pretence of going
anywhere. Winter was no time to look for anything.

Naturally, being about the house, he noticed the way Carrie did things.
She was far from perfect in household methods and economy, and her
little deviations on this