s and
shrivelled blooms. The gayety and color of the garden were gone, and in
their place was shabby and dishevelled ruin. He flung the sash up and
leaned out. The nipping autumn air was good to breathe. He looked about
him, surveying the havoc the frost had wrought among the flowers, and
smiled.

At breakfast he smiled again--a mirthless and calculated smile. "I
see that Brother Gorringe's flowers have come to grief over night," he
remarked.

Alice looked at him before she spoke, and saw on his face a confirmation
of the hostile hint in his voice. She nodded in a constrained way, and
said nothing.

"Or rather, I should say," Theron went on, with deliberate words, "the
late Brother Gorringe's flowers."

"How do you mean--LATE" asked his wife, swiftly.

"Oh, calm yourself!" replied the husband. "He is not dead. He has only
intimated to me his desire to sever his connection. I may add that he
did so in a highly offensive manner."

"I am very sorry," said Alice, in a low tone, and with her eyes on her
plate.

"I took it for granted you would be grieved at his backsliding,"
remarked Theron, making his phrases as pointed as he could. "He was
such a promising probationer, and you took such a keen interest in his
spiritual awakening. But the frost has nipped his zeal--along with the
hundred or more dollars' worth of flowers by which he testified his
faith. I find something interesting in their having been blasted
simultaneously."

Alice dropped all pretence of interest in her breakfast. With a flushed
face and lips tightly compressed, she made a movement as if to rise from
her chair. Then, changing her mind, she sat bolt upright and faced her
husband.

"I think we had better have this out right now," she said, in a voice
which Theron hardly recognized. "You have been hinting round the subject
long enough--too long. There are some things nobody is obliged to put
up with, and this is one of them. You will oblige me by saying out in so
many words what it is you are driving at."

The outburst astounded Theron. He laid down his knife and fork, and
gazed at his wife in frank surprise. She had so accustomed him, of late,
to a demeanor almost abject in its depressed docility that he had quite
forgotten the Alice of the old days, when she had spirit and courage
enough for two, and a notable tongue of her own. The flash in her
eyes and the lines of resolution about her mouth and chin for a moment
daunted him. Then he obse