ager, elderly man who could so poorly simulate patience. He
was not passionate--she might have forgiven him that. But he was
assuming passion, assuming youth, happily egotistical.

He was fifty-one: he had won a beautiful woman hardly more than half
his age. He wanted to talk about it, to have the conversation always
congratulatory and flattering. He had the attitude of a young husband,
without his youth, to which everything is forgiven.

Altogether, Martie found her engagement strangely trying. Rose,
instantly suspicious, was presently told of it, and Martie's sisters
and Rose planned an announcement luncheon for early July. Martie
thought she would really be glad when the fuss and flurry was over.

Long familiar with money scarcity, she wondered sometimes just what her
financial arrangement with her new husband would be. Clifford was the
richest man in Monroe. Not a shop would refuse her credit; nor a woman
in town feel so sure of her comfort and safety.

But what else? Bitter as her long dependence had been, and widowed and
experienced as she was, she dared not ask. There was something
essentially indelicate in any talk of an allowance now. She would
probably do what was done by almost all the wives she knew: charge,
spend little, and when she must have money, approach her husband at
breakfast or dinner: "Oh, Clifford, I need about ten dollars. For the
man who fixed the surrey, dear, and then if I take all the children in
to the moving pictures, they'll want ice-cream. And I ought to send
flowers to Rose; we don't charge there. Although I suppose I could send
some of our own roses just as well!"

And Clifford, like other husbands, would take less money than was
suggested from his pocket and say: "How's seven? You can have more if
you want it, but I haven't any more here! But if you like, send Ruth
down to the Bank--"

"What a fool I am!" Martie mused. "What does independence amount to,
anyway? If I ever had it, I'd probably be longing to get back into
shelter again.

"Teddy, do you understand that Mother is going to marry Uncle Cliff?"
she asked the child. He rested his little body against her, one arm
about her neck, as he stood beside her chair.

"Yes, Mother," he answered unenthusiastically. After a second's thought
he began to twist a white button on her blouse. "And then are we going
back to New York?" he asked.

"No, Loveliness, we stay here." She looked at the child's downcast
face. "Why, Teddy?" sh