ed in a fierce whisper: "He's sick, that's the matter with him. He
ain't sick enough to be in a government hospital, but he'd be better off
if he was. Even when he gets work he ain't able to stick to it. The
folks that hire him don't have any patience. As long as he was over
yonder in France it looked as if every woman in America was knitting for
him; and now since he's back here he can't get a job to keep him and the
children alive."

"How have you fed the children?"

"On what I could get cheapest. You see how sickly and peaked they look,
and it's been awful damp in these rooms sometimes. The doctor says he
ain't sick; it ain't his body, it's his mind. He says he's had a kind
of horror inside of him ever since he came home. He's turned against
everything he used to do, and even everything he used to believe in."

"That's hell!" exclaimed Stephen suddenly; and at her surprised glance,
he added, "I've been there and I know. Nerves, they say, but just as
real as your skin." He looked away from her to the man on the sofa. "To
have _that_, and be in poverty!" Turning away from the father, his
glance met the calm eyes of the baby fixed on him with that gaze which
was as old and as pitiless as philosophy.

"Ma, may I help myself?" screamed one of the children, drumming loudly
on the table. "I'd rather have bread and molasses!" cried another; and
"Oh, Ma, when we move to-morrow will you let me take the kitten I
found?"

"Well, I've talked to the Governor," said Darrow, in his level voice
which sounded to Stephen so unemotional, "and I think we can find a job
for your husband."

Suddenly the man on the sofa looked up. "I voted against him," he
whispered angrily.

Darrow laughed shortly. "You don't know the Governor if you think he'd
hold that against you," he replied. "But for that little weakness of his
he might not be a political problem."

"That's the way he goes on," remarked the woman despairingly. "Always
saying things straight out that other people would keep back. He don't
care what happens, that's the whole truth of it. He don't care about
anything on earth, not even his tobacco."

"Life!" thought Stephen, with a dull pain in his heart. "That's what
life is!" And the old familiar feeling of suffocation, of distaste for
everything that he had ever felt or thought or believed, smothered him
with the dryness of dust. Going quickly over to the sofa, he laid his
hand on the man's shoulder, and spoke in a high rin