been sitting as if I wasn't here. I don't know why I stand it.
Look here! You married me."

"So you are always telling me; but no one can buy the things you want."

"I'll get them somehow." He used the tones that made her shrink, but
tonight she was unmoved, and he saw that her womanhood was crushed by
the heaviness of her fatigue, and she was no more than a human being who
needed rest.

"I think you ought to go to bed," he said. "I'm going. Good-night." He
kissed her hand, but he did not let it fall. "You're not to look so
white tomorrow night," he said.

She did not know why she went to the kitchen door and stood by it while
he climbed the wall and dropped to the crisp snow on the further side.
He called out another low good-night and had her answer before she heard
his boots crunching the frozen crust. No stars and no moon shone on the
white garden, and to her it was like a place of death. The deep black of
the trees against the wall made a mourning border, and the poplars
lifted their heads in questioning of fate, but they had no leaves to
make the question audible, and no wind stirred their branches.
Everything was silent; it seemed as if everything had died, and Helen
was envious of the dead. She wished she might curl herself up at a
poplar's foot and sleep there until the frost tightened on her heart and
stopped its beating.

"It is so hard," she said aloud, and shut the door and locked it with
limp hands.

The kitchen's warmth gave back her sanity and humour, and she laughed as
she sat before the fire again, but when she spoke to Jim, it was in
whispers, because of the emptiness of the old house.

"We shall manage if only we can see Zebedee sometimes. Other women have
worse things to bear. And George likes me. I can't help liking people
when they like me. And there'll be Zebedee sometimes. We'll try to keep
things beautiful, and we'll be strong and very courageous, and now we'll
go to bed."

The next morning Zebedee appeared, and in the hall of their many
greetings, she slipped her hand into his.

"What have you been doing, Zebedee?"

"Working."

"Is that all?"

He laughed, and asked, "Isn't that enough?"

"No; not enough to keep you from me. I thought you would come yesterday
and the day before."

He looked at her with an astonishment that was near scorn, for she had
driven him from her and now reproached him when he did not run back. She
put her hand on his and looked at him with shadowless