about his mouth
twitch as though he were irritated. For all his failure and his
bitterness, he did not look a day older, she thought, than when she had
first seen him driving down High Street in that unforgettable May. He
was still as ardent, still as capable of inspiring first love in the
imagination of a girl. The light and the perfume of that enchanted
spring seemed suddenly to envelop her, and moved by a yearning to
recapture them for an instant, she drew closer to him, and slipped her
hand through his arm.

"Oh, I'm trying my luck with some trash. Nothing but trash has any
chance of going in this damned business."

"You mean it's different from your others? It's less serious?"

"Less serious? Well, I should say so. It's the sort of ice-cream
soda-water the public wants. But if I can get it put on, it ought to
run, and a play that runs is obliged to make money. I doubt if there's
anything much better than money, when it comes to that."

"You used to say it didn't matter."

"Did I? Well, I was a fool and I've learned better. These last few years
have taught me that nothing else on earth matters much."

This was so different from what that other Oliver--the Oliver of her
first love--might have said, that involuntarily her clasp on his arm
tightened. The change in him, so gradual at first that her mind, unused
to subtleties, had hardly grasped it, was beginning to frighten her.

"You have such burdens, dear," she said, and he noticed that her voice
had acquired the toneless sweetness of her mother's. "I've tried to be
as saving as I could, but the children have been sick so much that it
seems sometimes as if we should never get out of debt. I am trying now
to pay off the bills I was obliged to make while Harry was ill in
October. If I could only get perfectly strong, we might let Marthy go,
now that Jenny is getting so big."

"You work hard enough as it is, Virginia. You've been awfully good about
it," he answered, but his manner was almost casual, for he had grown to
take for granted her unselfishness with something of the unconcern with
which he took for granted the comfortable feeling of the spring weather.
In the early days of their marriage, when her fresh beauty had been a
power to rule him, she had taught him to assume his right to her
self-immolation on the altar of his comfort; and with the taste of
bitterness which sometimes follows the sweets of memory, she recalled
that their first quarrel had ari