if only she might see
the banquet lamps and hear the happy laughter. She began to feel
light-headed from the pain of it all, the pleasures and sadnesses of
memory, the fear of anticipation, and turned again to her paper with the
intent of giving her mind to safe and homely things. But something
caught her eyes and held them. A window seemed to be opened before her.
She looked through it into her tumultuous past. Or was this a weapon put
into her hand for the exacting future?

That night Myron Dill came into the sitting-room after his chores were
done, and lay down on the lounge between the two front windows. He
composed himself on his back with his hands placidly folded, and there
his wife found him when she came in after her own completed list of
deeds. He did not look up at her, and she was glad. She did not know how
her eyes gleamed behind the glittering plane of their glasses, nor how
deep the red was in her cheeks; but she was conscious of an inward
tumult which must, she knew, somehow betray itself. For an instant she
stood and looked at her husband, in what might have been relenting or
anticipation of the road she had to take. She knew so well what mantle
of repose was over him: how he liked the peeping of the frogs through
the open window, and what measure of satisfaction there was for him in
the consciousness of full rest and the certainty that next day would
usher in a crowding horde of duties he felt perfectly able to
administer. Mrs. Dill was a feminine creature, charged to the full with
the love of service and unerring intuition as to the manner of it, and
she did love to "see menfolks comfortable."

"Don't you want I should pull your boots off?"

This she said unwillingly, because she was about to break the current of
his peace, and it seemed deceitful to offer him an alleviation that
would do him no good after all.

"No," said Myron sleepily. "Let 'em be as they are."

Mrs. Dill drew up a chair and sat down in it at his side, as if she were
the watcher by a sick-bed or the partner in a cosy conversation.

"Myron," said she. Her voice frightened her. It sounded hoarse and
strange, and yet there was very little of it, deserted by her failing
breath.

"What say?" he answered from his drowse.

"I found a real interestin' piece in the 'Monitor' this mornin'. It was
how some folks ain't jest one person, as we think, but they're two and
sometimes three. And mebbe one of 'em's good, and t'other two are b