ten does that very
thing, and happily at that.

[Sidenote: The Hidden Heartache]

Still, there must be a hidden heartache, for woman, with her love of
love, is unable to understand the series of distinct and unrelated
episodes which make up the love of a man. It is hard to take the crumbs
another woman has left, especially if a goodly portion of a man's heart
is suspected to lie in the grave.

It is harder still, if helpless children are daily to look into her
face, with eyes which are neither hers nor his, and the supreme
crucifixion in the life of a woman whose ideals have not changed, is to
go into a home which has been made by the hands of a dead and dearly
loved wife.

To a woman, material things are always heavily laden with memories.
There is not a single article of furniture which has not its own
individuality. She cannot consider a piece of embroidery apart from the
dead hands that made it, nor a chair without some association with its
previous occupants.

Sometimes the rooms are heavily laden with portraits which are to
confront her from day to day with the taunting presence. She is obliged
to tell callers that the crayon upon the opposite wall is "the first
Mrs. ----." There are also pictures of the first wife's dead children,
and here and there the inevitable photograph, of years gone by, of bride
and groom in wedding garments--the man sitting down, of course, while
his wife stands behind him, as a servant might, with her hand upon his
chair.

[Sidenote: Day by Day]

Day by day, those eyes are fixed upon her in stern judgment. Her
failings and her conscious virtues are forever before that other woman.
Her tears and her laughter are alike subjected to that remorseless
scrutiny.

[Sidenote: A Sheeted Spectre]

Does she dare to forget and be happy? The other woman looks down upon
her like a sheeted spectre conveying a solemn warning. "You may die,"
those pictured lips seem to say, "and some other will take your place,
as you have taken mine." When the tactlessness, bad temper, or general
mulishness of man wrings unwilling tears from her eyes, there is no
sympathy to be gained from that impalpable presence. "You should not
have married him," the picture seems to say, or; "He treated me the same
way, and I died."

She is not to be blamed if she fancies that her husband also feels the
presence of the other. As she pours his coffee in the morning and he
looks upon her with the fond glance which men b