ur little brothers and
sisters, who depend on you for their livelihood."

"The trust will take care of them," Hamilton declared mechanically,
without lifting his face from his hands.

"You know how the trust will take care of them," Cicily retorted, with a
touch of bitterness. "It will pay them a starvation wage--no more!"

"But you're jealous of business!" Hamilton objected, raising his head to
gaze curiously at this most paradoxical person. "And, now, you are
urging me to keep at it. I don't understand."

Cicily laughed aloud, in genuine enjoyment. Her eyes were alight with
the fires of victory.

"I used to be jealous of it," she admitted, joyously. "I'm not any
longer--because I've beaten it. Your offer just now proves that, doesn't
it?... But, now that I have won a triumph over my old rival, why, we've
got to go forward."

"Together?" There was a tender, half-fearful doubt in the husband's
voice as he asked the question that meant so much to him, for he loved
this variable wife of his in this moment more than he had ever dreamed
that he could love a woman.

The wife's head drooped shyly, and her face flamed. Her word came very
softly spoken, but it rang a peal of happiness in the heart of her
husband.

"Yes."

The man rose from his chair, and went to his wife's side, where he
stooped, and took her face in his hands, and raised it until he could
look deep into the eyes of gold.

"You will care again, as you used to care?"

And she answered bravely, although a gentle confusion held her all
a-tremble:

"I will care because--because I've never stopped caring!"

"Thank God!" Hamilton said reverently, and gathered her into his arms.

Afterward, the twain lovers talked of many things, as lovers will, of
things grave and gay, of things silly and profound. They talked of
business affairs, into which Cicily might on occasion flash the light of
intuition to clear the way for grosser reason. They discussed the
mutuality of interests that would be theirs, a lesson of supreme worth
to a conventional world. They arranged philanthropic schemes for the
betterment of conditions for the little brothers and sisters who gained
a sustenance by toil at their behest. But, most of all, they talked
those divine absurdities that are the privilege of all true lovers. The
husband bewailed the incredible stupidity that had led him into neglect
of the most adorable being in the universe; the wife mourned over the
stern necess