t could be tired in toiling for her.
He only resented the necessity of cutting out such a main part of the
day for work as left him but little time to be at leisure with her.

She complained of his industry, for she was tired of spending her life
with novels, and the hours hung like leaden weights upon her, dragging
with her as she went through the day.

"Give yourself a rest," she said, not because she thought he needed it,
but because she wished him to amuse her.

"I am never tired of working for you," he answered, and the rare smile
came to his face.

With any other man in the world she might have told the truth and might
have said frankly that her life was growing almost unbearable, buried
from the world as she was, and cut off from society. But she was
conscious that she should never dare to say as much to Paul Griggs. She
was realizing, little by little, that his love for her was greater than
she had dreamed of, and immeasurably stronger than what she felt for
him.

Then she knew the pain of receiving more than she had to give. It was a
genuine pain of its kind, and in it, as in many other things, she
suffered a constant humiliation. She had taken herself for a heroic
character in the great moment when she had resolved to leave her
husband, intuitively sure that she loved Paul Griggs with all her heart,
and that she should continue to love him to the end in spite of the
world. She knew now that there was no endurance in the passion.

The very efforts she made to sustain it contributed to its destruction;
but she continued to play her part. Her strong dramatic instinct told
her when to speak and when to be silent, and how to modulate her voice
to a tender appeal, to a touching sadness, to the strength of suppressed
emotion. It was for a good object, she told herself, and therefore it
must be right. He was giving his life for her, day by day, and he must
never know that she no longer loved him. It would kill him, she thought;
for with him it was all real. She grew melancholy and thought of death.
If she died young, he should never guess that she had not loved him to
the very last.

In her lonely thoughts she dwelt upon the possibility, for it was a
possibility now. There was that before her which, when it came, might
turn life into death very suddenly. She had moments of tenderness when
she thought of her own dead face lying on the white pillow, and the
picture was so real that her eyes filled with tears. Sh