ant me to bathe your head? And here's some nice, hot
coffee all ready for you."

Jim woke slowly to a realization of his troubles and his blessings. His
wife was bathing his head with hands that trembled. Not always had she
greeted his indiscretions with such loving forbearance. He noticed, though
his waking faculties were not over-keen, that her face was pale and
frightened, and that her eyes, meeting his, held a dumb, measureless
affection.

"What th' hell are you babying me for?" But his roughness did not deceive
her woman's wits. He was not getting the lecture he anticipated, and this
was his way of showing that he was not embarrassed by her kindness. The
morning sunlight was pitilessly frank in its exposure of the grim pinch of
poverty in the mean little room, but the woman was unconscious of these
things; what she saw was that Jim, the reckless, Jim, the dare-devil
terror of the country, Jim, who had married and settled with her into
home-keeping respectability, Jim, who had struggled with misfortune and
fallen, had, young as he was, lost every look of youth; that hope had gone
from his dull eyes, and that his face had become drawn until the
death's-head grinned beneath the scant padding of flesh. But he was
to-day, as always, the one man in the world for her. In making a world of
their own and reducing their parents to supplementary consideration, their
children, whom she had sent away that she might be alone with him, had
given a different quality to the love of this pair that had known so many
curious vicissitudes. The responsibilities of parenthood had placed them
on a tenderer, as well as a securer footing; and as she saw his age and
weariness, he recognized hers, and both felt a self-accusing twinge.

"That's a blamed good cup of coffee," he said, by way of relieving the
tension that had crept into the situation. "Any one would think you was
settin' your cap for me 'stead of us being married for years."

Alida sighed. "It's better to end than to begin like this," she said, in
the far-away voice of one who thinks aloud. The word "end" had slipped out
before she realized what she was saying, and the knowledge haunted her as
an omen. She glanced at him quickly, to see if he had noticed it.

"Why did you say end?" He saw that her eyes were full of tears and chafed
her. "You ain't thinking of divorcing me, like Mountain Pink done Bosky?"

"Oh, Jim," she said, and her face was all aquiver, "I never could divor