hands.

"I was a fool, Amzi. There you have it all tied up in a package and
labeled in red ink; and we needn't ever speak of it again. It's on the
shelf--the top one, behind the door, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't
come back to cry over spilt milk, like a naughty dairymaid who trips and
falls on the cellar steps. I ought to; I ought to put on mourning for
myself and crawl into Center Church on my knees and ask the Lord's
forgiveness before the whole congregation. But I'm not going to do
anything of the kind. One reason is that it wouldn't do me any good; and
the other is that I'd never get out of the church alive. They'd tear me
to pieces! It's this way, Amzi, that if we were all made in the same
mould you could work out a philosophy from experience that would apply
to everybody; but the trouble is that we're all different. I'm
different; it was because I was different that I shook Tom and went off
with Jack. Of course, the other man is a worthless cur and loafer;
that's where fate flew up and struck at me--a deserved blow. But when I
saw that I had made a bad break, I didn't sit down and sob; I merely
tried to put a little starch into my self-respect and keep from going
clear downhill. Tom's probably forgotten me by this time; he never was
much of a hater and I guess that's what made me get tired of him. He
always had the other cheek ready, and when I annoyed him he used to take
refuge in the Greek poets, who didn't mean anything to me."

She smiled as though the recollection of the Greek poets amused her and
ran on in her low, musical voice:--

"When I saw I'd drawn a blank in Jack Holton, it really didn't bother me
so much as you might think. Of course, I was worried and humiliated at
times; and there were days when I went into the telegraph office and
went through the motions of sending for you to come and fish me out of
my troubles. I tore up half a dozen of those messages, so you never
heard me squeal; and then I began playing my own game in my own way. I
hung a smile on the door, so to speak, and did my suffering inside. For
ten years Jack never knew anything about me--the real me. For a long
time I couldn't quite come to the point of shaking him, and he couldn't
shake me,--he couldn't without starving"; and she smiled the ghost of a
grim little smile. "I suppose I wasn't exactly in a position to insist
on a husband's fidelity, but when he began to be a filthy nuisance I got
rid of him. Just before I went