rmation
which he had a lover's right to claim. Had she been frightened, for
instance--way down in the bottom of that serene heart of hers had she
been frightened? In the ensuing desperate struggle for life had she
struggled just one little tiny bit harder because Stanton was in that
life? Now, in the dreadful, unstrung reaction of the adventure, did
her whole nature waken and yearn and cry out for that one heart in all
the world that belonged to her? Plainly, by her silence in the matter,
she did not intend to share anything as intimate even as her fear of
death with the man whom she claimed to love.

It was just this last touch of deliberate, selfish aloofness that
startled Stanton's thoughts with the one persistent, brutally nagging
question: After all, was a woman's undeniably glorious ability to save
a drowning man the supreme, requisite of a happy marriage?

Day by day, night by night, hour by hour, minute by minute, the
question began to dig into Stanton's brain, throwing much dust and
confusion into brain-corners otherwise perfectly orderly and sweet and
clean.

Week by week, grown suddenly and morbidly analytical, he watched for
Cornelia's letters with increasingly passionate hopefulness, and met
each fresh disappointment with increasingly passionate resentment.
Except for the Serial-Letter Co.'s ingeniously varied attentions there
was practically nothing to help him make either day or night bearable.
More and more Cornelia's infrequent letters suggested exquisitely
painted empty dishes offered to a starving person. More and more
"Molly's" whimsical messages fed him and nourished him and joyously
pleased him like some nonsensically fashioned candy-box that yet
proved brimming full of real food for a real man. Fight as he would
against it, he began to cherish a sense of furious annoyance that
Cornelia's failure to provide for him had so thrust him out, as it
were, to feed among strangers. With frowning perplexity and real
worry he felt the tingling, vivid consciousness of Molly's personality
begin to permeate and impregnate his whole nature. Yet when he tried
to acknowledge and thereby cancel his personal sense of obligation to
this "Molly" by writing an exceptionally civil note of appreciation to
the Serial-Letter Co., the Serial-Letter Co. answered him tersely--

"Pray do not thank us for the jonquils,--blanket-wrapper, etc., etc.
Surely they are merely presents from yourself to yourself. It is your
money