but poorly to cope with the trials of her new life. True,
Mrs. Fair was an unpleasant woman to live with, but if Emily had
chosen to be more patient under petty insults, and less resentful of
her husband's well-meant though clumsy efforts for harmony, the older
woman could have effected real little mischief. But this Emily refused
to be, and the breach between husband and wife widened insidiously.

The final rupture came two years after their marriage. Emily, in
rebellious anger, told her husband that she would no longer live in
the same house with his mother.

"You must choose between us," she said, her splendid voice vibrating
with all the unleashed emotion of her being, yet with no faltering in
it. "If she stays I go."

Stephen Fair, harassed and bewildered, was angry with the relentless
anger of a patient man roused at last.

"Go, then," he said sternly, "I'll never turn my mother from my door
for any woman's whim."

The stormy red went out of Emily's face, leaving it like a marble
wash.

"You mean that!" she said calmly. "Think well. If I go I'll never
return."

"I do mean it," said Stephen. "Leave my house if you will--if you hold
your marriage vow so lightly. When your senses return you are welcome
to come back to me. I will never ask you to."

Without another word Emily turned away. That night she went back to
John and Amelia. They, on their part, welcomed her back gladly,
believing her to be a wronged and ill-used woman. They hated Stephen
Fair with a new and personal rancour. The one thing they could hardly
have forgiven Emily would have been the fact of her relenting towards
him.

But she did not relent. In her soul she knew that, with all her just
grievances, she had been in the wrong, and for that she could not
forgive him!

Two years after she had left Stephen Mrs. Fair died, and his widowed
sister-in-law went to keep house for him. If he thought of Emily he
made no sign. Stephen Fair never broke a word once passed.

Since their separation no greeting or look had ever passed between
husband and wife. When they met, as they occasionally did, neither
impassive face changed. Emily Fair had buried her love deeply. In her
pride and anger she would not let herself remember even where she had
dug its grave.

And now Stephen was ill. The strange woman felt a certain pride in her
own inflexibility because the fact did not affect her. She told
herself that she could not have felt more unconcerned h