you want some coffee, Jim?"

"No--no coffee!"

Julia tiptoed about the room a moment more, took her little sewing
basket and a new magazine, and giving a departing look at her husband,
found his eyes wide open and watching her. Instantly a rush of tears
pressed behind her eyelids, and she felt herself grow weak and confused.

"Thank you for fixing me up so nicely, darling," Jim said meekly.

"Oh, you're welcome!" Julia answered, with a desperate effort to appear
calm.

"Will you kiss me, Julie?" Jim pursued, and a second later she was on
her knees beside him, their arms were locked together, and their lips
met as if they had never kissed each other before.

"You little angel," Jim said, "what a beast I am! As if life hadn't been
hard enough for you without my adding to it! Oh, but what a night I've
had! And you'll forgive me, won't you, sweetheart, for I _love_ you so?"

Julia put her face down and cried stormily, her wet face pressed against
his, his arms holding her close. After a while, when the sobs lessened,
they began to talk together, and then laugh together in the exquisite
relief of being reconciled. Then Jim went to sleep, and Julia sat beside
him, his hand in hers, her eyes idly following the play of broken bright
lights that quivered on the wall.

She leaned back in her big chair, feeling weary and spent, broken, but
utterly at peace. From that hour life was changed to her, and she dimly
felt the change, accepted it as stoically as an Indian might the loss of
a limb, and adjusted herself to all it implied. If Jim was a little less
her god, he was still hers, hers in some new relationship that appealed
to what was protective and maternal in her. And if the burden of her
secret had grown inconceivably heavy for her to bear, she knew by some
instinct that this burst of jealous frenzy had somehow lightened its
weight for Jim; she, not he, would henceforth pay the price.

"And life isn't easy and gay, say what you will," thought Julia
philosophically. "There is no use grumbling and groaning, and saying to
yourself, 'Oh, if only it wasn't just this or that thing worrying me!'
for there is always this or that. Kennedy and Bab think I am the most
fortunate girl in the world, and yet, to be able to go back ten years,
and live a few weeks over again, I'd give up everything I have, even
Jim. Just to start _square_! Just to feel that wretched thing wasn't there
like a layer of mud under everything I do, making