ays, weeks, years--one deadly
sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty pay, poor living, growing
debts--and inextricably mixed up with it all, this dreary, gaunt black
figure, waiting always for him at the top of the hill.... He had not
realized what it meant to him, the success of his invention--how much he
was depending on it. He felt now as he might if, moving blindly through
a dark passage, hoping any minute to see a glimmer of light ahead, an
outlet into the open air, he had run full into a locked door--a door to
which he had no key.

The thought of going home to his wife brought no comfort with it. They
had long ago ceased to be honest with each other, Gertrude and he; their
attempts to make the best of a sorry situation had in the end become a
barrier which held them apart. Gertrude would not admit that she was
ever tired, or lonesome, or discouraged; would find no fault with their
poor little house, their scanty means, her unaccustomed duties. She
never spoke of the past any more, nor of the future, lest in that there
might be an implied criticism of the present; she was resolutely,
unvaryingly, aggressively contented. But this contentment was too
constant, too uniform, like false color on a woman's cheek. He sometimes
wished she would throw pretense to the winds--would put her head on his
shoulder, and sob and cry, and confess that she wished she were dead--or
that she would upbraid him, reproach him, call him some of the hard
names he called himself. But she was insistently cheerful; and there was
nothing for him to do, in the face of this, but play an awkward second
to her, ignore his aching back, his sore hands, his throbbing head, and
keep a resolute silence as to all that happened to vex and humiliate and
perplex and hurt him. It was not always easy; to-day he was conscious
that he was walking more and more slowly as he drew near the house.

How poor and forlorn it looked in this glare of light! During these last
weeks his thoughts had turned often to that stately house where he had
lived for nineteen years--its green, close-clipped lawn glistening under
a perpetual play of water, its great beds of white and green and
cardinal foliage plants, its shut-in porches, its awnings, its flowering
shrubs, its vines, its heavy iron fence. He looked with bitter
attentiveness at the dingy frame cottage he was approaching, noticing
each homely detail--the dish-towels spread on the bushes in the back
yard, the mop ha