is eyes, and, without a
word, walked out of the room. A moment later the front door banged
behind him. Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolish
things like that many times; she rather liked to say them! But she had
not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,--they seemed to
strike her in the face! _He was tired of her._ Instantly she was alert!
What must she do? She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she
must be sweet to him; she mustn't be cross; then she must try (Mrs.
Newbolt had told her so!) to "entertain" him. "I'll read things, and
talk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!" She must sew on his buttons, and
scold poor old O'Brien.... With just this same silent determination she
had hurried to act that night on the mountain!

But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning and
planning!--Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon. It
had begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way--little gritty pellets
that blew into his face. He had nowhere to go--four o'clock is a dead
time to drop in on people! He had nothing to do, and nothing to think
of--except the foolish, middle-aged woman, stating, in their dreary
third-floor front, an undeniable fact--he was tired of her! Walking
aimlessly about in the cold, he said to himself, dully, "Why _was_ I
such an idiot as to marry her?" He was old enough to curse himself for
his folly, but he was young enough to suffer, agonies of mortification,
and to pity himself, too; pity himself for the mere physical discomfort
of his life: the boarding-house table, with its uninteresting food; the
worn shirt cuff which was scratching his wrist; and he pitied himself
for his spiritual discomfort--when Eleanor called him "darling" at the
dinner table, or exhibited her jealousy before people! "They're sorry
for me--confound 'em!" he thought.... Yet how trivial the cuff was, or
even--yes, even the impertinence which was "sorry" for him!--how
unimportant, when compared to a ring of braided grass, and the smell of
locust blossoms, and a lovely voice, rising and falling:

"O Spring!"

"Oh, _damn_!" he said to himself, feeling the scrape of worn linen on
the back of his hand. Then he fell into certain moody imaginings with
which that winter he frequently and harmlessly amused himself. He used
to call these flights of fancy "fool thoughts"; but they were at least
an outlet to his smoldering irritation, "Suppose I should kick over
th