--a born trader, Hettie. They say it is like a mild form
of gambling. Just yesterday I made a deal with an old chap--"

"I don't want to talk about trading and swapping, and the like," the
woman broke in, firmly. "Besides, no sort of ordinary business ever made
a man look like you've looked lately. You used to be sorter active and
nervous, but now you set and brood with an odd, reddish look on your
face. It ain't natural. It looks like you've resigned yourself to--to
something that you didn't exactly like before, and it don't please me to
see you that way. Pa's noticed it and mentioned it two or three times."

"There's nothing in the world the matter with me," Henley declared,
actually alarmed at the incongruity of his position.

"Alfred," the woman said, contritely, and she bent forward and peered up
into his face, "you are a sight better man than I am a woman, and--"

"Shucks!"

"You may say shucks if you want to, but wait till I get through. I
reckon, as women go, in the general run, I'm a queer sort of female. I
never was just like other girls. For one thing, I always wanted what was
out of my reach; not getting a thing, or even having doubts about it,
always made me want it more than anything else. I reckon that is why
Dick kind o' fascinated me: the girls was all after him, and he seemed a
sort of prize to be had at any cost. Even after we was married, as maybe
you know, he kept me worried with his attentions to some of the old
crowd of girls. But enough of that. When he died and you come back,
begging, as you did, to have me consider you, I finally give in and took
you. But that wasn't all. I had stood up before a preacher in the house
of God and agreed to be your wife and helpmeet, but, as I now see it, I
didn't do my duty by you. I made the mistake, I reckon, of thinking too
much about what I owed to the dead and gone, and I went so far as to do
things in public that actually driv' you away from home and caused folks
to laugh at you and make remarks. Dixie Hart was right; I wasn't toting
fair with you, and I want to tell you to-night, Alfred, that I see my
error, and--and I am plumb sorry."

He turned upon her resolutely. She was looking down, and he fancied she
was about to shed such tears as she had often shed early in their
married life when Dick Wrinkle's name was mentioned. He had none of the
old chivalrous sympathy which such a demonstration had once evoked, nor
any of the old indulgence for a love w