self, of course. If you don't mind I'll try some of the seltzer
straight."

"You've stopped drinking?" she said, looking at him steadily and
unsmilingly. "What for?"

"It wasn't doing me any good," said Bob. "Don't you approve of the
idea?"

Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly.

"Entirely," she said with a sculptured smile. "I could not
conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on
Sunday."

The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk,
but his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt
miserable, and once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but
each time the scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his
ear, and his mouth set with determination.

Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to
have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the
unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived
had dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole
curious and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty
look of at least a wife-beater or a family tyrant.

After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such
chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable
countenance, brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and
a bowl of cracked ice and set them on the table.

"May I ask," she said, with some of the ice in her tones, "whether
I am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, I'll
make one for myself. It's rather chilly this evening, for some
reason."

"Oh, come now, Jess," said Bob good-naturedly, "don't be too rough
on me. Help yourself, by all means. There's no danger of your
overdoing it. But I thought there was with me; and that's why I
quit. Have yours, and then let's get out the banjo and try over that
new quickstep."

"I've heard," said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking
alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing
this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the
evil habit of banjo-playing, too."

She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other
side of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour.

And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent
look on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her
shoulders, taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers.

In a moment to Jessie