enervating, dry heat, and Martie
wilted under it. There was no longer any doubt about her condition. The
hour was coming closer when Sally must know, when all Monroe must know
just how mad a venture her marriage had been.

One day she had a letter from Mabel, who begged her to come back to the
city. Jesse was sure he could get her an occasional engagement; it was
better than fretting herself to death there in that "jay" town.

Martie sat thinking for a long time with this letter in her hand. For
the first time thoughts consciously hostile to Wallace swept through
her mind. She analyzed the motives that had urged her into marriage;
she had been taught to think of it as a woman's surest refuge. If she
had not been so taught, what might she have done for herself in this
year? Was it fair of him to take what she had to give then, in quick
and generous devotion, and to fail her so utterly now, when the old
physical supremacy was gone, and when she must meet, in the future, not
only her own needs but the needs of a child? He had known more of life
than she--her mother and father had known more--why had nobody helped
her?

That evening, when Sally and Joe had gone to the moving pictures,
leaving Martie to listen for 'Lizabeth's little snuffle of awakening,
should she unexpectedly awake, Martie cleared the dining-room table and
wrote to Wallace.

This was not one of her cheerful, courageous letters, filled with
affectionate solicitude for him, and brave hope for the future. She
wept over the pages, she reproached and blamed him. For the first time
she told him of the baby's coming. She was his wife, he must help her
get away, at least until she was well again. She was sick of waiting
and hoping; now he must answer her, he must advise her.

Her face was wet with tears; she went that night to mail it at the
corner. Afterward she lay long awake, wondering in her ignorant girl's
heart if such an unwifely tirade were sufficient cause for divorce,
wondering if he would ever love her again after reading it.

Wallace brought the answer himself, five days later. Coming in from a
lonely walk, Martie found him eating bread and jam and scrambled eggs
in Sally's kitchen. The sight of him there in the flesh, smiling and
handsome, was almost too much for her. She rushed into his arms, and
sobbed and laughed like a madwoman, as she assured herself of his
blessed reality.

Sally, in sympathetic tears herself, tried to join in Wallace's