hout asking. She had always
forgiven him for what he had not done, said, or thought, or for the
things he had done and said most justly. But there had been a charm
about her, a sweet foolishness that was irresistible.

In the dark now he smiled to think how dear and fascinating she had been
then. Oh, she had loved him then, had loved the very faults she had
imagined in him. Perhaps after he was dead she would remember him with
her earlier tenderness. She would blame herself for making him the
irascible, hot-tempered brute he had been--perhaps--at times.

And now he had slain and buried himself, and his woe could burrow no
farther down. His soul was at the bottom of the pit. There was no other
way to go but upward, and that, of course, was impossible.

As he wallowed in the lugubrious comfort of his own post-mortem revenge
he wished that he had left unsaid some of the things he had said.
Quelled by the vision of his wife weeping over him and repenting her
cruelties, they began to seem less cruel. She was absolved by remorse.

He heard her sobbing over his coffin and heard her recall her ferocious
words with shame. His white, set face seemed to try to console her. He
heard what he was trying to tell her in all the gentle understanding of
the tomb:

"I said worse things, honey. I don't know how I could have used such
words to you, my sweetheart. A longshoreman wouldn't have called a
fishwife what I called you, you blessed child. But it was my love that
tormented me. If a man had quarreled with me, we'd have had a knock-down
and drag-out and nothing more thought of it. If any woman but you had
denounced me as you did I'd have shrugged my shoulders and not cared
a--at all.

"It was because I loved you, honey, that your least frown hurt me so.
But I didn't really mean what I said. It wasn't true. You're the best,
the faithfulest, the prettiest, dearest woman in all the world, and you
were a precious wife to me--so much more beautiful, more tender, more
devoted than the wives of the other men I knew. I will pray God to bring
you to me in the place I'm going to. I could not live without you
anywhere."

This was what he was trying to tell her, and could not utter a word of
it. He seemed to be lying in his coffin, staring up at her through
sealed eyelids. He could not purse his cold lips to kiss her warm mouth.
He could not lift an icy hand to bless her brow. They would come soon
to lay the last board over his face and sc