l problem of retaining a husband's love, as few wives of any
class knew it, just as she knew the pre-nuptial problem of selecting a
husband, as few girls of the working class knew it.

She had of herself developed an eminently rational philosophy of love.
Instinctively, and consciously, too, she had made toward delicacy, and
shunned the perils of the habitual and commonplace. Thoroughly aware she
was that as she cheapened herself so did she cheapen love. Never, in
the weeks of their married life, had Billy found her dowdy, or harshly
irritable, or lethargic. And she had deliberately permeated her
house with her personal atmosphere of coolness, and freshness, and
equableness. Nor had she been ignorant of such assets as surprise and
charm. Her imagination had not been asleep, and she had been born with
wisdom. In Billy she had won a prize, and she knew it. She appreciated
his lover's ardor and was proud. His open-handed liberality, his desire
for everything of the best, his own personal cleanliness and care of
himself she recognized as far beyond the average. He was never coarse.
He met delicacy with delicacy, though it was obvious to her that the
initiative in all such matters lay with her and must lie with her
always. He was largely unconscious of what he did and why. But she knew
in all full clarity of judgment. And he was such a prize among men.

Despite her clear sight of her problem of keeping Billy a lover, and
despite the considerable knowledge and experience arrayed before her
mental vision, Mercedes Higgins had spread before her a vastly wider
panorama. The old woman had verified her own conclusions, given her
new ideas, clinched old ones, and even savagely emphasized the tragic
importance of the whole problem. Much Saxon remembered of that mad
preachment, much she guessed and felt, and much had been beyond her
experience and understanding. But the metaphors of the veils and the
flowers, and the rules of giving to abandonment with always more to
abandon, she grasped thoroughly, and she was enabled to formulate a
bigger and stronger love-philosophy. In the light of the revelation she
re-examined the married lives of all she had ever known, and, with sharp
definiteness as never before, she saw where and why so many of them had
failed.

With renewed ardor Saxon devoted herself to her household, to her
pretties, and to her charms. She marketed with a keener desire for the
best, though never ignoring the need for e