He seemed never to have enough "change" in his pockets, no
matter how much he brought home.

[Illustration: "'THE LITTLE SPIDER WON'T HURT YOU'"]

In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing
when there is no other passion to divide them--the nature grows all
one way; and there are others who seem independent, yet who are always
as dependent as children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of
affectionate love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of
all men; that unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions the
cause of the beloved against the world. No help-giving virtue had gone
out from this household in the last year; it had all been a dead lift.

Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that Sunday when
she had said that she hated them. When she had asked for money, she
had always added the proviso, "if he could afford it," and accepted
the fact either way without comment. He was, as time went on, more and
more affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, as she
keenly felt, less personally loving.

If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity to
go out; and if she stayed up, he remained at home and went to sleep on
the lounge, and the little touch that binds divergence with the inner
thread of sympathy was lacking.

Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered far the
most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; the fire of love of which
she was by right high priestess still burned secretly for her tending
as she covered over the embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold
and chill for lack of that vital warmth.

There were moments when she felt that she could die gladly for him,
but always for that glory of self-triumphing in the end. Then that
which seemed as if it could never change began to change.

Before the child was born, and now since that, there was a difference.
Men and women who suffer most from imaginary wrongs may become sane
and heroic in times of real danger. Lois, noble, sweet, and brave,
thoughtful for Zaidee and Redge and Justin even while she trembled,
excited reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband.

Then, afterward, he was proud of his second son. When Justin came in
at the end of each day and sat down by her bedside, holding her
blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a
sweet, sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly
soothin