red the door. She put
him in her husband's chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. He
seemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her.
When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer.

She set before him the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafed
his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he
ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had put
before him.

A semblance of life returned gradually to him.

"I was pretty near done up when I knocked," he said several times.

She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it in
fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter of
course.

She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the back
kitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had dragged
himself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture of
President Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and told
him to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She left
him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later she
went to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her he
was asleep.

She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire.

Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, the
exhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had she
done?

She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced,
fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite of
being warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of,
not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed her
husband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself into
disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it was
already stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but it
was already stolen.

The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tenderness
for suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, said
incessantly, "I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do no
less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy and
anguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in.
I could do no less."

Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herself
to going upstairs to her own room and to bed.

Once she got up