."

Theodosia went on spatting her balls of golden butter on the print in
silence. She was looking very neat and pretty in her big white apron,
her sleeves rolled up high above her plump, dimpled elbows, and her
ruddy hair curling about her face and her white throat. She looked as
pliable as her butter.

Her silence angered her husband. He shuffled impatiently.

"Well, what have you to say, Dosia?"

"Nothing," said Theodosia. "If you have made up your mind to go, go
you will, I suppose. But I will not. There is no use in talking. We've
been over the ground often enough, Wes. The matter is settled."

Up to that moment Wesley had always believed that his wife would yield
at last, when she saw that he was determined. Now he realized that she
never would. Under that exterior of milky, dimpled flesh and calm blue
eyes was all the iron will of old dead and forgotten Henry Ford. This
mildest and meekest of girls and wives was not to be moved a
hairsbreadth by all argument or entreaty, or insistence on a husband's
rights.

A great, sudden anger came over the man. He lifted his hand and for
one moment it seemed to Theodosia as if he meant to strike her. Then
he dropped it with the first oath that had ever crossed his lips.

"You listen to me," he said thickly. "If you won't go with me I'll
never come back here--never. When you want to do your duty as a wife
you can come to me. But I'll never come back."

He turned on his heel and strode away. Theodosia kept on spatting her
butter. The little perpendicular wrinkle had come between her brows
again. At that moment an odd, almost uncanny resemblance to the old
portrait of her great-great-grandfather, which hung on the parlour
wall at home, came out on her girlish face.

The fortnight passed by. Wesley was silent and sullen, never speaking
to his wife when he could avoid it. Theodosia was as sweet and serene
as ever. She made an extra supply of shirts and socks for him, put up
his lunch basket, and packed his trunk carefully. But she never spoke
of his journey.

He did not sell his farm. Irving Brooke rented it. Theodosia was to
live in the house. The business arrangements were simple and soon
concluded.

Heatherton folks gossiped a great deal. They all condemned Theodosia.
Even her own people sided against her now. They hated to be mixed up
in a local scandal, and since Wes was bound to go they told Theodosia
that it was her duty to go with him, no matter how much she