little reflection she asked, "How soon will he be here?"

"I don't know," said Grace. "He seems to have started yesterday
morning."

"He can be here by day after to-morrow," Mrs. Maynard computed. "There
will be some one to look after poor little Bella then," she added, as
if, during her sickness, Bella must have been wholly neglected. "Don't
let the child be all dirt when her father comes."

"Mother will look after Bella," Grace replied, too meek again to resent
the implication. After a pause, "Oh, Louise," she added beseechingly,
"I've suffered so much from my own wrong-headedness and obstinacy that I
couldn't bear to see you taking the same risk, and I'm so glad that you
are going to meet your husband in the right spirit."

"What right spirit?" croaked Mrs. Maynard.

"The wish to please him, to"--

"I don't choose to have him say that his child disgraces him," replied
Mrs. Maynard, in the low, husky, monotonous murmur in which she was
obliged to utter everything.

"But, dear Louise!" cried the other, "you choose something else too,
don't you? You wish to meet him as if no unkindness had parted you, and
as if you were to be always together after this? I hope you do! Then I
should feel that all this suffering and, trouble was a mercy."

"Other people's misery is always a mercy to them," hoarsely suggested
Mrs. Maynard.

"Yes, I know that," Grace submitted, with meek conviction. "But,
Louise," she pleaded, "you will make up with your husband, won't you?
Whatever he has done, that will surely be best. I know that you love
him, and that he must love you, yet. It's the only way. If you were
finally separated from him, and you and he could be happy apart, what
would become of that poor child? Who will take a father's place with
her? That's the worst about it. Oh, Louise, I feel so badly for you--for
what you have lost, and may lose. Marriage must change people so that
unless they live to each other, their lives will be maimed and useless.
It ought to be so much easier to forgive any wrong your husband does you
than to punish it; for that perpetuates the wrong, and forgiveness ends
it, and it's the only thing that can end a wrong. I am sure that
your husband will be ready to do or say anything you wish; but if he
shouldn't, Louise, you will receive him forgivingly, and make the first
advance? It's a woman's right to make the advances in forgiving."

Mrs. Maynard lay with her hands stretched at her side under the