ee you home along the towing-path. It is the shortest way,
but it's lonely at night."

"Thank you, Mr. Herrick. May Olga come, too?"

"Of course. She would be very much hurt if she were left behind."

"How silly you are over that great dog of yours, Jim." Mrs. Herrick
included even dogs in her universal hatred nowadays. "I declare I wish
someone would poison the beast."

This threat, uttered not for the first time, made Herrick set his lips
firmly, and for once his wife regretted her taunt.

"Oh, I'm not going to do it," she said with a laugh. "Good-bye, Toni, if
you must go. I'll come and look you up in a day or two."

When Toni and Herrick were alone, walking along the towing-path in the
darkness, Herrick turned to Toni with a sigh.

"Mrs. Rose, I can't tell you how sorry I am--nor how grateful I am both
to you and Mr. Rose for your kindness to my poor little wife."

"Oh, don't say that," begged Toni, her warm heart filled with pity for
him. "I like your wife immensely--we are friends, you know, and you must
not forget she has suffered terribly."

"Yes, I suppose she has. And yet"--he spoke vehemently--"has she
suffered so much as I have done--as I shall go on doing as long as we
both live? Oh, I've no right to say it--I ought to be man enough to
suffer in silence--but it's hard to bear her constant allusions to her
prison life--her taunts--wouldn't you think she would be glad to forget
all that, to put it behind her? Yet every day she talks of it. She never
allows me to forget for one instant that she has been in hell--and every
word she utters is an indictment of me, a reproach for the cowardice
which let her go to prison."

"Oh, Mr. Herrick--I'm so sorry...."

The stammered words brought a smile to Herrick's face.

"Poor child! I ought not to blame her--rather to pity her.... I _do_
pity her with all my heart. But she won't let me sympathize with her.
One word and she flies at me. She is unhappy here, yet she will make no
plans for going abroad. She talks as though I kept her here, when God
knows I would go to the ends of the earth if she wished it."

"Yes, I know, but I think if you go on being patient with her," hazarded
Toni, "she will come to her better self again. Don't you agree with me?"

"I don't know." His tone was rather despairing. "Sometimes I fear both
our lives are ruined. It's wonderful what an effect a wife has on her
husband's life--and _vice versa_, of course. Some people seem to th