t until
evening.

Fanny greeted him at the door, and there was the inevitable flurry
about lighting the parlor stove, and presently Ellen entered.

She had changed the gown which she had worn at her factory-work for
her last winter's best one. Her young face was pale, almost severe,
and she met him in a way which made her seem a stranger.

Robert realized suddenly that she had, as it were, closed the door
upon all their old relations. She seemed years older, and at the
same time indefinably younger, since she was letting the childish
impulses, which are at the heart of all of us untouched by time and
experience, rise rampant and unchecked. She was following the lead
of her own convictions with the terrible unswerving of a child, even
in the face of her own hurt. She was, metaphorically, bumping her
own head against the floor in her vain struggles for mastery over
the mighty conditions of her life.

She bowed to Robert, and did not seem to see his proffered hand.

"Won't you shake hands with me?" he asked, almost humbly, although
his own wrath was beginning to rise.

"No, I would rather not," she replied, with a straight look at him.
Her blue eyes did not falter in the least.

"May I sit down?" he said. "I have something I would like to say to
you."

"Certainly, if you wish," she replied. Then she seated herself on
the sofa, with Robert opposite in the crushed-plush easy-chair.

The room was still very cold, and the breath could be seen at the
lips of each in white clouds. Robert had on his coat, but Ellen had
nothing over her blue gown. It was on Robert's tongue to ask if she
were not cold, then he refrained. The issues at stake seemed to make
the question frivolous to offensiveness. He felt that any approach
to tenderness when Ellen was in her present mood would invoke an
indignation for which he could scarcely blame her, that he must try
to meet her on equal fighting-ground.

Ellen sat before him, her little, cold hands tightly folded in her
lap, her mouth set hard, her steady fire of blue eyes on his face,
waiting for him to speak.

Robert felt a decided awkwardness about beginning to talk. Suddenly
it occurred to him to wonder what there was to say. It amounted to
this: they were in their two different positions, their two points
of view--would either leave for any argument of the other? Then he
wondered if he could, in the face of a girl who wore an expression
like that, stoop to make an argument, fo