began to act as if he wasn't a man. And he
was ashamed of his life because he couldn't support me and Amabel,
ashamed of his life because he had to live on my little earnin's. He
was ashamed to look me in the face, and ashamed to look his own
child in the face. It was only night before last he was talkin' to
me, and I didn't know what he meant then, but I know now. I thought
then he meant something else, but now I know what he meant. He sat a
long time leanin' his head on his hands, whilst I was sewin' on
wrappers, after Amabel had gone to bed, and finally he looks up and
says, 'Eva, you was right and I was wrong.'

"'What do you mean, Jim?' says I.

"'I mean you was right when you thought we'd better not get married,
and I was wrong,' says he; and he spoke terrible bitter and sad. I
never heard him speak like it. He sounded like another man. I jest
flung down my sewin' and went over to him, and leaned his poor head
against my shoulder. 'Jim,' says I, 'I 'ain't never regretted it.'
And God knows I spoke the truth, and I speak the truth when I say it
now. I 'ain't never regretted it, and I don't regret it now." Eva
said the last with a look as if she were hurling defiance, then she
went on in the same high, monotonous key above the ordinary key of
life. "When I says that, he jest gives a great sigh and sort of
pushes me away and gets up. 'Well, I have,' says he; 'I have, and
sometimes I think the best thing I can do is to take myself out of
the way, instead of sittin' here day after day and seein' you
wearin' your fingers to the bone to support me, and seein' my child,
an' bein' ashamed to look her in the face. Sometimes I think you an'
Amabel would be a damned sight better off without me than with me,
and I'm done for anyway, and it don't make much difference what I do
next.'

"'Jim Tenny, you jest quit talkin' in such a way as this,' says I,
for I thought he meant to make away with himself, but that wa'n't
what he meant. Aggie Bemis had been windin' her net round him, and
he wa'n't nothin' but a man, and all discouraged, and he gave in.
Any man would in his place. He ain't to blame. It's the tyrants
that's over us all that's to blame." Eva's voice shrilled higher.
"Curse them!" she shrieked. "Curse them all!--every rich man in this
gold-ridden country!"

"Eva Tenny, you're beside yourself," said Fanny, who was herself
white to her lips, yet she viewed her sister indignantly, as one
violent nature will view ano