g to New York.

"Oh, I see you are going!" she twitted.

"I'm going to stay," he answered, "and let them turn me out of my agency
here," and in this bitterness their talk ended.

V.

His wife made no attempt to renew their talk before March went to
his business in the morning, and they parted in dry offence. Their
experience was that these things always came right of themselves at
last, and they usually let them. He knew that she had really tried to
consent to a thing that was repugnant to her, and in his heart he gave
her more credit for the effort than he had allowed her openly. She knew
that she had made it with the reservation he accused her of, and that he
had a right to feel sore at what she could not help. But he left her
to brood over his ingratitude, and she suffered him to go heavy and
unfriended to meet the chances of the day. He said to himself that if
she had assented cordially to the conditions of Fulkerson's offer, he
would have had the courage to take all the other risks himself, and
would have had the satisfaction of resigning his place. As it was, he
must wait till he was removed; and he figured with bitter pleasure the
pain she would feel when he came home some day and told her he had been
supplanted, after it was too late to close with Fulkerson.

He found a letter on his desk from the secretary, "Dictated," in
typewriting, which briefly informed him that Mr. Hubbell, the Inspector
of Agencies, would be in Boston on Wednesday, and would call at his
office during the forenoon. The letter was not different in tone from
many that he had formerly received; but the visit announced was out of
the usual order, and March believed he read his fate in it. During the
eighteen years of his connection with it--first as a subordinate in the
Boston office, and finally as its general agent there--he had seen
a good many changes in the Reciprocity; presidents, vice-presidents,
actuaries, and general agents had come and gone, but there had always
seemed to be a recognition of his efficiency, or at least sufficiency,
and there had never been any manner of trouble, no question of accounts,
no apparent dissatisfaction with his management, until latterly, when
there had begun to come from headquarters some suggestions of enterprise
in certain ways, which gave him his first suspicions of his clerk
Watkins's willingness to succeed him; they embodied some of Watkins's
ideas. The things proposed seemed to March und