sympathy, and
by the permanent marks left by each breach between them. Yet he still
fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she
acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice.

Something of this was in his mind when, the afternoon before their
departure, he came home to help her with their last arrangements. She
had begged him, for the day, to leave her alone in their cramped salon,
into which belated bundles were still pouring; and it was nearly dark
when he returned. The evening before she had seemed pale and nervous,
and at the last moment had excused herself from dining with the Shallums
at a suburban restaurant. It was so unlike her to miss any opportunity
of the kind that Ralph had felt a little anxious. But with the arrival
of the packers she was afoot and in command again, and he withdrew
submissively, as Mr. Spragg, in the early Apex days, might have fled
from the spring storm of "house-cleaning."

When he entered the sitting-room, he found it still in disorder. Every
chair was hidden under scattered dresses, tissue-paper surged from the
yawning trunks and, prone among her heaped-up finery. Undine lay with
closed eyes on the sofa.

She raised her head as he entered, and then turned listlessly away.

"My poor girl, what's the matter? Haven't they finished yet?"

Instead of answering she pressed her face into the cushion and began to
sob. The violence of her weeping shook her hair down on her shoulders,
and her hands, clenching the arm of the sofa, pressed it away from her
as if any contact were insufferable.

Ralph bent over her in alarm. "Why, what's wrong, dear? What's
happened?"

Her fatigue of the previous evening came back to him--a puzzled hunted
look in her eyes; and with the memory a vague wonder revived. He had
fancied himself fairly disencumbered of the stock formulas about the
hallowing effects of motherhood, and there were many reasons for not
welcoming the news he suspected she had to give; but the woman a man
loves is always a special case, and everything was different that befell
Undine. If this was what had befallen her it was wonderful and divine:
for the moment that was all he felt.

"Dear, tell me what's the matter," he pleaded.

She sobbed on unheedingly and he waited for her agitation to subside. He
shrank from the phrases considered appropriate to the situation, but he
wanted to hold her close and give her the depth of his heart in l