e beautiful bits of
furniture and new pictures for the house, and showed a touching
thoughtfulness in remembering Tom's fancies; but somehow he had an
uneasy suspicion that she could get along pretty well without him when
it came to the deeper wishes and hopes of her life, and that her most
important concerns were all matters in which he had no share. He seemed
to himself to have merged his life in his wife's; he lost his interest
in things outside the house and grounds; he felt himself fast growing
rusty and behind the times, and to have somehow missed a good deal in
life; he had a suspicion that he was a failure. One day the thought
rushed over him that his had been almost exactly the experience of most
women, and he wondered if it really was any more disappointing and
ignominious to him than it was to women themselves. "Some of them may be
contented with it," he said to himself, soberly. "People think women are
designed for such careers by nature, but I don't know why I ever made
such a fool of myself."

Having once seen his situation in life from such a standpoint, he felt
it day by day to be more degrading, and he wondered what he should do
about it; and once, drawn by a new, strange sympathy, he went to the
little family burying ground. It was one of the mild, dim days that come
sometimes in early November, when the pale sunlight is like the pathetic
smile of a sad face, and he sat for a long time on the limp,
frost-bitten grass beside his mother's grave.

But when he went home in the twilight his step-mother, who just then was
making them a little visit, mentioned that she had been looking through
some boxes of hers that had been packed long before and stowed away in
the garret. "Everything looks very nice up there," she said, in her
wheezing voice (which, worse than usual that day, always made him
nervous); and added, without any intentional slight to his feelings, "I
do think you have always been a most excellent housekeeper."

"I'm tired of such nonsense!" he exclaimed, with surprising indignation.
"Mary, I wish you to arrange your affairs so that you can leave them for
six months at least. I am going to spend this winter in Europe."

"Why, Tom, dear!" said his wife, appealingly. "I couldn't leave my
business any way in the"--

But she caught sight of a look on his usually placid countenance that
was something more than decision, and refrained from saying anything
more.

And three weeks from that day th