ling the little
hands. Tenney came up to her and the child, turning at his step, looking
up at him solemnly. Tira's heart seemed to contract within her. This was
the very glance, "lookin' up kinder droll," that had brought on the
storm. But for Tenney it evidently meant something now that fitted his
mood of passionate anxiety to get back into the warm security of
domestic peace.

"You lemme take him," he said, "whilst you git off your things. You'll
ketch your death o' cold, carryin' on so."

The last he had to add. She was, his defensive inner mind told him, all
wrong in flying out of the house "like a crazed creatur'" when she might
have stayed and told him, just told him, whether she was the kind of
woman he, at these unheralded mad moments, thought she was. That was the
undercurrent always in his mind: if she wouldn't be so still and
hateful, if she would only tell him. She might have some pity on a man,
that defensive inner mind advised him, when she saw him all worked up.
But the minute he warned her the devil of doubt was again tempting him,
she began to freeze up and wouldn't speak to him at all. No wonder, with
that devil inside whispering to him and hounding him on--no wonder he
said things and--he trembled here and dared not follow out that
thought--and was afraid he might do things. But she shook her head, at
his offer of taking the child.

"You might go an' cut a slice o' ham," she said wearily. "It's 'most
dinner time. We might's well have that as anything."

But the baby reached out and closed his little fingers about Tenney's
thumb. Tenney stood there, his heart swelling within him at the contrast
between the child's forgivingness and her cruelty. Now she had the
child's outer things off, and she rose with them in one hand, carrying
the child on the other arm, and it was her movement that dragged the
little fingers away and broke that significant clasp on Tenney's thumb.
How hateful she could be, he thought, his heart swelling more and more.
He stood where she left him, and she went to the low couch and set the
baby down there, and put into his hand a formless doll she wanted him to
love. He never really noticed it, but she felt he would sometime love
the doll. Then she glanced, with the air of being recalled to a
wearisome routine, at the table in the middle of the floor; it meant ham
and eggs. It seemed also to occur to her that she had not taken off her
cloak, and she hung it on its nail behind th