f, he did not know how, in his studio, reeking with
perspiration and breathless. He must almost have run. He struck a match
with a shaking hand, and looked at his face in the glass. He expected to
see the bleeding marks of her nails on his cheeks, but he could see
nothing. He grovelled inwardly; it was all so low and coarse and vulgar;
it was all so just and apt to his deserts.

There was a pistol among the dusty bric-a-brac on the mantel which he had
kept loaded to fire at a cat in the area. He took it and sat looking into
the muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill him. It slipped
through his hand and struck the floor, and there was a report; he sprang
into the air, feeling that he had been shot. But he found himself still
alive, with only a burning line along his cheek, such as one of
Christine's finger-nails might have left.

He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact that he had got his
punishment in the right way, and that his case was not to be dignified
into tragedy.

XVIII.

The Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the Dryfooses off on the French
steamer. There was no longer any business obligation on them to be civil,
and there was greater kindness for that reason in the attention they
offered. 'Every Other Week' had been made over to the joint ownership of
March and Fulkerson, and the details arranged with a hardness on
Dryfoos's side which certainly left Mrs. March with a sense of his
incomplete regeneration. Yet when she saw him there on the steamer, she
pitied him; he looked wearied and bewildered; even his wife, with her
twitching head, and her prophecies of evil, croaked hoarsely out, while
she clung to Mrs. March's hand where they sat together till the
leave-takers were ordered ashore, was less pathetic. Mela was looking
after both of them, and trying to cheer them in a joyful excitement. "I
tell 'em it's goun' to add ten years to both their lives," she said. "The
voyage 'll do their healths good; and then, we're gittun' away from that
miser'ble pack o' servants that was eatun' us up, there in New York. I
hate the place!" she said, as if they had already left it. "Yes, Mrs.
Mandel's goun', too," she added, following the direction of Mrs. March's
eyes where they noted Mrs. Mandel, speaking to Christine on the other
side of the cabin. "Her and Christine had a kind of a spat, and she was
goun' to leave, but here only the other day, Christine offered to make it
up with her, and n