ard him moving about the apartment with
restless steps. After a time she also heard the unmistakable sound of
a trunk lid thrown back, and the movements of him as he gathered his
clothes--so she surmised. But she did not rise till the maid rapped on
her door with the eight-o'clock salutation:

"Breakfast, ma'am."

They made a pretense of eating. Hazel sought a chair in the
living-room. A book lay open in her lap. But the print ran into
blurred lines. She could not follow the sense of the words. An
incessant turmoil of thought harassed her. Bill passed through the
room once or twice. Determinedly she ignored him. The final snap of
the lock on his trunk came to her at last, the bumping sounds of its
passage to the hall. Then a burly expressman shouldered it into his
wagon and drove away.

A few minutes after that Bill came in and took a seat facing her.

"What are you going to do, Hazel?" he asked soberly.

"Nothing," she curtly replied.

"Are you going to sit down and fold your hands and let our air castles
come tumbling about our ears, without making the least effort to
prevent?" he continued gently. "Seems to me that's not like you at
all. I never thought you were a quitter."

"I'm not a quitter," she flung back resentfully. "I refuse to be
browbeaten, that's all. There appears to be only one choice--to follow
you like a lamb. And I'm not lamblike. I'd say that you are the
quitter. You have stirred up all this trouble here between us. Now
you're running away from it. That's how it looks to me. Go on! I can
get along."

"I dare say you can," he commented wearily. "Most of us can muddle
along somehow, no matter what happens. But it seems a pity, little
person. We had all the chance in the world. You've developed an
abnormal streak lately. If you'd just break away and come back with
me. You don't know what good medicine those old woods are. Won't you
try it a while?"

"I am not by nature fitted to lead the hermit existence," she returned
sarcastically.

And even while her lips were uttering these various unworthy little
bitternesses she inwardly wondered at her own words. It was not what
she would have said, not at all what she was half minded to say. But a
devil of perverseness spurred her. She was full of protest against
everything.

"I wish we'd had a baby," Bill murmured softly. "You'd be different.
You'd have something to live for besides this frothy, neurotic
existenc