ack, but oh, how long
it seems to wait for the living! Month after month to keep the room
ready for the one who does not come for our longing! Month after month
to dress the bed and the table, and lay out the books they loved, and
the little treasures that may tell they were unforgotten. Joan looked
at the small dressing-table holding the shell box, and the satin
pincushion, and the alabaster vase which Denas had once thought
beautiful beyond price. The snowy quilt and pillows, the carefully
kept floor and chairs, the clothing washed and laid with sprigs of
lavender in the tidy drawers--oh, what poetry and eloquence of
untiring, undespairing mother-love were in these things!

But this patient, loving pity for their erring child was an attitude
not easily supposable, and Denasia did not suppose it. She knew from
Roland's report that her appearance as a public singer had caused her
parents great sorrow and anger, and she could only imagine a still
deeper anger when she added the sin of dancing to other causes of
offence. But this alienation from her own people was the bitter drop
in all her success and in all her pleasure. For now that the illusions
and selfishness of her bride-days were past, the faithful home
affection that never wounded and never deceived resumed its
importance, and she longed for her father's kiss and her mother's
breast.

But every day the day's work is to face, and Denasia's days were fully
occupied by their obvious duties. So week after week and month after
month wore on in alternations of hope and despair, happiness and
vexation, loving and quarrelling. Roland certainly, with his
discontent and abiding sense of wrong, threw a perpetual shadow over
life. She did not even dare to take, with any show of pleasure, such
poor satisfaction as her passing fame awarded. A man may be jealous of
the praise given to his own wife, and there were times when Roland
could not understand Denasia's success and his own failure--bitter
hours in which the poor girl felt that whether she pleased her
audience or did not please them, her husband was sure to be offended
and angry.

She was almost glad when, at the close of the season, the company
disbanded and she was at liberty to retire. She had saved money and
was resolved to resume her studies. There was at least nothing in that
to irritate her husband, and she had a strong desire to improve her
talent in every direction. One evening Roland entered their
sitting-