re we are. We
do the thing we want to do--we make the kind of home for ourselves
that we've agreed we would like--and then it turns out that somehow it
doesn't come up to expectations. You get tired of it. I suppose, if the
truth were known, I'm by way of being tired of it too. Well, if you look
at it, that fact is the most important thing in the world for both of
us. It's the one thing that we ought to be most anxious to discuss, and
examine frankly in all its bearings--in order to see if we can't better
it--but that's precisely the thing that doesn't get talked about between
us. You would never have told me that you were unhappy----"

"You use the word again," she reminded him, a wan smile softening her
protest.

Thorpe stood up, and took a slow step toward the chair. He held her
glance with his own, as he stood then, his head bent, gravely regarding
her.

"Do you tell me that you are happy?" he asked, with sober directness.

She fluttered her hands in a little restrained gesture of comment. "You
consider only the extremes," she told him. "Between black and white
there are so many colours and shades and half-tones! The whole spectrum,
in fact. Hardly anybody, I should think, gets over the edge into the
true black or the true white. There are always tints, modifications.
People are always inside the colour-scheme, so to speak. The worst that
can be said of me is that I may be in the blues--in the light-blues--but
it is fair to remember that they photograph white."

Though there was an impulse within him to resent this as trifling,
he resisted it, and judicially considered her allegory. "That is to
say"--he began hesitatingly.

"To the observer I am happy. To myself I am not unhappy."

"Why won't you tell me, Edith, just where you are?"

The sound of her name was somewhat unfamiliar to their discourse. The
intonation which his voice gave to it now caused her to look up quickly.

"If I could tell myself," she answered him, after an instant's thought,
"pray believe that I would tell you."

The way seemed for the moment blocked before him, and he sighed heavily.
"I want to get nearer to you," he said, with gloom, "and I don't!"

It occurred to her to remark: "You take exception to my phraseology when
I say you always try to be 'nice,' but I'm sure you know what I mean."
She offered him this assurance with a tentative smile, into which he
gazed moodily.

"You didn't think I was 'nice' when you consented to mar