ert passed with the
Spanish War. Money enough, and the knowledge of how to use it without
blatancy or pinching--that would have been the second conclusion.

They were sitting in deep chairs in the living room now, a tall-stemmed
reading lamp glowing softly between them, hardly speaking. The tiredness
that had been in the man's face like the writing in a 'crossed' letter
began to leave it softly. He reached over, took the woman's hand and
held it--not closely or with greediness but with a firm clasp that had
something weary like appeal in it and something strong like a knowledge
of rest.

"Always like this, at home," he said slowly.

"It _is_ rather sweet." Her voice had the gentleness of water running
into water. Her eyes looked at him once and left him deliberately
but not as if they didn't care. It must have been a love-match in the
beginning then--her eyes seemed so infirm.

"You'll read a little?"

"Yes."

"Home," he said. He seemed queerly satisfied to say the word, queerly
moved as if even after so much reality had been lived through together,
he couldn't quite believe that it was reality.

"And I've been waiting for it--five days, six days, this time?"

She must have been at the seashore after all--tan or lack of it meant
little these days, especially to a woman who lived in this kind of an
apartment. The third conclusion might have been rather sentimental, a
title out of a moving picture--something about Even in the Wastes of the
Giant City the Weary Heart Will Always Turn To--Just Home.

A doll on a small table began to buzz mysteriously in its internals. The
man released the woman's hand--both looking deeply annoyed.

"I thought we had a private number here," said the man, the tiredness
coming back into his face like scribbles on parchment.

She crossed to the telephone with a charming furtiveness--you could see
she was playing they had just been found behind the piano together in a
game of hide-and-seek. The doll was disembowelled of its telephone.

"No--No--Oh very well--"

"What was it?"

She smiled.

"Is this the Eclair Picture Palace?" she mimicked. [Illustration: THE
TIREDNESS THAT HAD BEEN IN THE MAN'S FACE BEGAN TO LEAVE IT] Both seemed
almost childishly relieved. So in spite of his successful-business-man
mouth, he wasn't the kind that is less a husband than a
telephone-receiver, especially at home. Still, she would have made a
difference even to telephone-receivers, that could be f