was the environment in those days.

Our grandmothers lived in the country, and knew none of the strain and
excitement of these modern times. The high pressure of social and
financial conditions, as we know them, the effort to live up to the
modern standards, the congested city life and the expensive country
life, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our women
than our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of the
care and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesome
country fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly that
they can only whirl around and around and attend "to business," and all
the care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nurses
and governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry to the wife.

You assured me Edna had all the assistants in caring for her children
she wanted, but you did not realize that every paid employe in a
household is, as a rule, just so much more care to the mistress, not
less than a tax on the husband's purse and, consequently, on his time.

What Edna craves is _your_ love, _your_ attention, _your_ sympathy, not
the service of paid domestics. She wants you to notice her fading bloom,
and to take her in your arms and say, tenderly, "Little girl, we must
get those old roses back. And we must go away for a new honeymoon, all
alone, and forget every care, even if we forget the babies for a few
days."

One little speech like that, one little outing like that, would do more
toward driving away the demon of jealousy than all I could by a thousand
sermons and homilies.

I remember at your own board you made me uncomfortable talking about my
complexion, which you chose to say was "remarkable for a woman of my
age." And then you proceeded to describe some wonderful beauty you had
seen at the Country Club the day previous, and all the time I saw the
tears hidden back under the lids of Edna's tired eyes, and a hurt look
on her pale face. Do you imagine she was _jealous_ of your compliment to
me? or of your praise of the girl's beauty at the Country Club?

No, no, my dear Mr. Gordon, I know Edna too well to accuse her of such
petty feelings. She was only hurt at your lack of taste in accenting her
own lost bloom by needlessly emphasizing another's possession of what
had once been hers.

Yet she called upon the young lady that very day and invited her to
luncheon, and even then you indulged in pronounced a