ere?' And his voice answered, 'Let
me in.'

"I sat down on a chair in the passage, and shook all over like a person
struck with palsy. Not from the fear of him--but from my mind being in
the prophetic way. I knew I was going to be driven to it at last. Try as
I might to keep from doing it, my mind told me I was to do it now. I sat
shaking on the chair in the passage; I on one side of the door, and he
on the other.

"He knocked again, and again, and again. I knew it was useless to
try--and yet I resolved to try. I determined not to let him in till I
was forced to it. I determined to let him alarm the neighborhood, and
to see if the neighborhood would step between us. I went up stairs and
waited at the open staircase window over the door.

"The policeman came up, and the neighbors came out. They were all for
giving him into custody. The policeman laid hands on him. He had but one
word to say; he had only to point up to me at the window, and to tell
them I was his wife. The neighbors went indoors again. The policeman
dropped hold of his arm. It was I who was in the wrong, and not he. I
was bound to let my husband in. I went down stairs again, and let him
in.

"Nothing passed between us that night. I threw open the door of the
bedroom next to mine, and went and locked myself into my own room. He
was dead beat with roaming the streets, without a penny in his pocket,
all day long. The bed to lie on was all he wanted for that night.

"The next morning I tried again--tried to turn back on the way that
I was doomed to go; knowing beforehand that it would be of no use. I
offered him three parts of my poor weekly earnings, to be paid to him
regularly at the landlord's office, if he would only keep away from me,
and from the house. He laughed in my face. As my husband, he could take
all my earnings if he chose. And as for leaving the house, the house
offered him free quarters to live in as long as I was employed to look
after it. The landlord couldn't part man and wife.

"I said no more. Later in the day the landlord came. He said if we could
make it out to live together peaceably he had neither the right nor
the wish to interfere. If we made any disturbances, then he should
be obliged to provide himself with some other woman to look after the
house. I had nowhere else to go, and no other employment to undertake.
If, in spite of that, I had put on my bonnet and walked out, my husband
would have walked out after me. And all d