to carry
herself with the air of one who holds that relationship. Still, she
never went to Cincinnati, where his family lived, and none of his
relatives ever came near her. Then, too, his attitude, in spite of the
money which had first blinded them, was peculiar. He really did not
carry himself like a married man. He was so indifferent. There were
weeks in which she appeared to receive only perfunctory notes. There
were times when she would only go away for a few days to meet him.
Then there were the long periods in which she absented
herself--the only worthwhile testimony toward a real
relationship, and that, in a way, unnatural.

Bass, who had grown to be a young man of twenty-five, with some
business judgment and a desire to get out in the world, was
suspicious. He had come to have a pretty keen knowledge of life, and
intuitively he felt that things were not right. George, nineteen, who
had gained a slight foothold in a wall-paper factory and was looking
forward to a career in that field, was also restless. He felt that
something was wrong. Martha, seventeen, was still in school, as were
William and Veronica. Each was offered an opportunity to study
indefinitely; but there was unrest with life. They knew about Jennie's
child. The neighbors were obviously drawing conclusions for
themselves. They had few friends. Gerhardt himself finally concluded
that there was something wrong, but he had let himself into this
situation, and was not in much of a position now to raise an argument.
He wanted to ask her at times--proposed to make her do better if
he could--but the worst had already been done. It depended on the
man now, he knew that.

Things were gradually nearing a state where a general upheaval
would have taken place had not life stepped in with one of its
fortuitous solutions. Mrs. Gerhardt's health failed. Although stout
and formerly of a fairly active disposition, she had of late years
become decidedly sedentary in her habits and grown weak, which,
coupled with a mind naturally given to worry, and weighed upon as it
had been by a number of serious and disturbing ills, seemed now to
culminate in a slow but very certain case of systemic poisoning. She
became decidedly sluggish in her motions, wearied more quickly at the
few tasks left for her to do, and finally complained to Jennie that it
was very hard for her to climb stairs. "I'm not feeling well," she
said. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Jennie now took al