t it's
the kind of a love that doesn't die!

"And I'd like to know where under the sun you'd go!" he demanded hotly,
irritated at the slight smile his last words had brought.

"What I will do, Stuart, after leaving you, is for me to determine,
isn't it?"

"A nice way to treat me!" he cried, and threw himself down on the couch,
elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. "After all these
years--after all there has been--that's a _nice_ way--" he choked.

She was quick to go over and sit beside him; she leaned a little against
him, her hand on his arm, just as she had sat many times when he needed
her, when she brought him comfort. The thought of all those times rose
in her and brought tears to her eyes that had been burning dry a moment
before. She felt the feeling this had whipped to life in him and was
moved by it, and by an underlying feeling of the sadness of change. For
his expostulations spoke of just that--change. She knew this for the
last hurt she could help him through, that she must help him through
this hurt brought him by this last thing she could do for him. Something
about things being like that moved her deeply. She saw it all so
clearly, and so sadly. It was not grief this brought him; this was not
the frenzy or the anguish in the thought of losing her that there would
have been in those other years. It was shock, rather--disturbance, and
the forcing home to him that sense of change. He would have gone on
without much taking stock, because, as he had said, it was the thing to
do. Habit, a sense of fitness, rather than deep personal need, would
have made him go on. And now it was his sense that it was gone, his
resentment against that, his momentary feeling of being left desolate.
She looked at his bowed head through tears. Gently she laid her hand on
it. She thought of him as he stood before the automobile the other day
lighting up in the gay talk with that girl. She knew, with a sudden
wrench in her heart she knew it, that he would not be long desolate. She
understood him too well for that. She knew that, hard as she seemed in
that hour, she was doing for Stuart in leaving him the greatest thing
she could now do for him. A tear fell to her hand in her clear knowing
of that. There was deep sadness in knowing that, after all there had
been, to leave the way cleared of herself was doing a greater thing than
anything else she could do for him.

A sob shook her and he raised his face upon whic