as what made her think he wouldn't trust her.
There would always be that wrong between them.

He drew her (unresisting now) to the other side of the room and lowered
her to the couch that stood there. He looked into the teapot, where the
drained leaves were still warm. He filled it up again with boiling water
from the kettle on the gas ring, and poured out a cup and gave it her to
drink, supporting her stooping head tenderly with his hand. Her forehead
burned to his touch.

"Poor little Vi," he said. "Poor little Vi."

She glanced at him; slantwise, yet the look made his heart ache.

"Then you _do_ trust me?" she muttered.

"You _know_ I do."

They sat there leaning against each other till the room grew dim. Then
they rose, uncertainly; and hand in hand, as it were under the old
enchantment, they went upstairs into the dark room where the Baby slept.

To-night he did not look at it.

CHAPTER XX

That was on the eighth of June.

He remembered, because it was a Saturday, Saturdays and Sundays being
the landmarks of his existence by which alone he measured the distances
and marked the order of events. The habit of so regarding them was
contracted in his early days at Woolridge's, when only in and by those
hours snatched from Woolridge's did he live. All other days of the week
were colored and had value according to their nearness to Saturday and
Sunday. Monday was black, Tuesday brown, Wednesday a browny gray,
Thursday a rather clearer gray (by Thursday you had broken the back of
the week), Friday distinctly rosy, and Saturday and Sunday, even when it
rained, a golden white.

He hadn't been married a year before all the seven were shady; the
colors ran into each other till even Sundays became a kind of grayish
drab. And still he continued to date things by Saturdays and Sundays; as
he did now in his mind, exultantly, thus: "Saturday, the eighth: Jujubes
knocked out in the first round."

Not that the dates went for very much with Ranny, to whom interesting
things so seldom happened. He remembered this one more because of his
scoring off Jujubes than because of the scene with Violet and its
sequel. He was used to scenes and sequels, and was no longer concerned
to note their correspondence and significance. So that he never noted
now that it was on and after Thursday, the thirteenth, that what he
called the Great Improvement had begun.

He meant the improvement in Violet's appearance. He had accepted t