iage from a man's point of view. Do they really believe that women
are alive? Is matrimony always a bondage to them? Are all women's
lives so lonely? Are their wishes neglected, their attempts to think
laughed at, their pride stricken?--I wonder. . . . And he did love me,
I know that: but if he has forgotten I must not remember it. He could
not see enough of me then: and the things he said, and does not
remember--I was a wonder that the world could not equal--it is
laughable.--A look from me was joy, a word delight, a touch ecstasy.
He would run to the ends of the earth to gratify a whim of mine, and
life without me was not worth living. . . . If I would only love him!
If I could only bring myself to care for him a little--he was too
humble, too unworthy to imagine--and so forth, and so forth; and it was
all true then. Now I am some one who waits upon him. He wants this
and that, and asks me for it. He has cut his finger and shouts for me
to bind it up, and I must be terribly concerned about it; somehow, he
will even manage to blame me for his cut finger. He cannot sleep in
the night, so I must awaken also and listen to his complaint. He is
sick, and the medicine tastes nasty; I am to understand that if the
medicine tastes nasty I am responsible for it--I should not have given
him anything nasty: he is surprised: he trusted me not to do such a
thing to him. He turns to me like a child when he has any . . . he
turns to me like a child and trusts . . . he turns to me . . . like a
child. . . .

The sound of a horse's hooves came to her, and she arose from her chair
with frightened haste. She looked swiftly at the clock, and then stood
listening in a rigid attitude, with a face that grew white and peaked,
and flushed and paled again. The car came swiftly nearer and stopped a
little way from the house. Then a foot crunched the gravel, and her
desperate eyes went roving quickly about the room as though she were
looking for a place to hide in. Next, after a little interval of
silence, a pebble struck the window. She stood for a moment staring at
the window and then ran to it, swung open a pane of glass, and, leaning
out, she called in a high, strained voice, "I will not go." Then,
closing the window again, she ran back to the fireplace, crouched down
on the rug and pushed her fingers into her ears.

Her husband came home before eleven o'clock, brushed the wraith of a
kiss half an inch from her lips, and asked was there anythi