ned with a disgrace like this you would be as anxious
to defend it as I am. How is it you go back on me in a moment like
this? You're not the woman you once were, Mary."

"And you're not the man you once were, John," she answered. "Oh,
can't you see that we're just reaping what has been sown--the crop
we're been raising through ail these years? Beulah's very life has
been crying out for action, for scope, for room, for something that
would give her a reason for existence, that would put a purpose into
her life, and we've not tried to answer that cry. I blame myself as
much as you, John, perhaps more, because I should have--read her
heart--I should have seen the danger signals long ago. But I was so
busy, I didn't think. That's the trouble, John, we've been so busy,
both of us, we haven't taken time to keep up with her. The present
generation is not the past; what was enough for you and me isn't
enough for our children. It doesn't do any good to scold--scolding
doesn't change conditions; but if we'd stopped and thought and
studied over them we might have changed them--or cured them. We
didn't, John; you were too busy with your wheat and your cattle, and
I was too busy with my house-work, and what have we made of it? We've
gathered some property together, and our cares have grown in
proportion, but that which was more to us than all the property in
the world we have lost--because we valued it less." The tears were
slowly coursing down her cheeks, and her thin, work-worn arms were
stealing about his neck. "Don't think, dear," she whispered, "that
I'm indifferent, or that this hurts me less than you, or that I would
shield myself from one iota of my just blame, but let us face the
fact that it has been our mistake rather than Beulah's."

He removed her arms, not ungently. "I never thought it would come to
this," he said. "I thought I humoured her every way I could. As for
our hard work--well, work makes money, and I noticed Beulah could
spend her share. There was no protesting about the work that earned
the money when she wanted a new hat or a new dress, and she generally
got what she wanted."

"You don't understand, John. It wasn't the work, it was the making a
god of work, and giving it so much of our lives that there was none
left for her. That's why she looked somewhere else--if she has looked
somewhere else."

"Allan works as hard and harder than ever Beulah did, and Allan
doesn't feel that way about it."

"That