the least idea that it was so
serious--I could have lived in three rooms--we had been poor--what did I
care for anything but Nathaniel! I only did all those things
because--because there was nothing else to do!"

Lydia tried to break the current with a reminder of the sweet memories
of the past. "Father loved you so! He loved to give you what you wanted,
Mother dear."

"What I wanted! I wanted my husband. I want my husband!" the widow
screamed like a person on the rack.

The doctor sent Lydia away with a hasty gesture. "You must not see her
when she is violent," he said. "You would never forget it."

It was something he himself never forgot, used as he was to pitiful
scenes in the life of suffering humanity. He was almost like a sick
person himself, going about his practice with sunken eyes and gray face.
His need for sympathy was so great that he abandoned the tacit silence
about the Emerys which had existed between him and Rankin ever since
Lydia's marriage, and, going out to the house in the Black Rock woods,
unburdened to the younger man the horror of his heart.

"She's suffering," he cried. "She's literally heartbroken! She is! It's
real! And what has she had to make up for it? Oh, it's monstrous! One
thing she says keeps ringing in my ears. That gray-haired woman, a human
being my own age--the silly, tragic, childish thing she keeps
saying--'I only did all those things--I only wanted all those
things--because there was nothing else!' _Nothing else!_" He turned on
his host with a fierce "Good God! She's right. What else was there ever
for--for any woman of her class--"

Rankin pushed his shivering, fidgeting visitor into a chair and, laying
a big hand on his shoulder, said with a faint smile: "Maybe I can divert
your mind for an instant with a story--another one of my great-aunt's,
only it's an old one this time; you've probably heard it--about the old
man who said to his wife on his death-bed, 'I've tried to be a good
husband to you, dear. It's been hard on my teeth sometimes, but I've
always eaten the crusts and let you have the soft bread.' You remember
what the wife's answer was?"

"No," said the doctor frowning.

"It's the epitome of tragedy. She said, 'Oh, my dear, and I like crusts
so!'"

The doctor stared into the fire. "Do you mean--there's work for them?"

"I mean work for them," repeated the younger man.

The word echoed in a long silence.

"It's the most precious possession we have," said