comfort. True, there had been
moments when her warm, loving nature had been chilled. At such times,
misgivings had clamored and she had, finally, all but made up her mind
to tell him that she could not go on--that it had all been a mistake.
She would say to him, she had decided: "Martin, you are one of the
kindest and best men, and I could be happy with you if only you loved
me, but you don't really care for me and you never will. I feel it. Oh,
I do! and I could not bear it--to live with you day in and day out and
know that."

But she had reckoned without her own goodness of heart. On the very
evening on which she had quite determined to tell Martin this decision
he also had arrived at one. As soon as he had entered Rose's little
parlor he had exclaimed with an enthusiasm unusual with him: "We broke
the ground for your new garden, today, Rose of Sharon, and Fletcher
wants to see you. There are some more little things you'll have to talk
over with him. He understands that you're the one I want suited."

Rose had felt suddenly reassured. Why, she had asked herself contritely,
couldn't she let Martin express his love in his own way? Why was she
always trying to measure his feelings for her by set standards?

"I've been wondering," he had gone on quickly, "what you would think
of putting up with my old shack while the new house is being built? It
wouldn't be as if you were going to live there for long and you'd be
right on hand to direct things."

"Why, I could do that, of course," she had answered pleasantly. "If
you've lived there all these years, I surely ought to be able to live
there a few months, but Martin--"

"I know what you're going to say," he had interrupted hastily. "You
think we ought to wait a while longer, but if we're going to pull
together for the rest of our lives why mightn't we just as well begin
now? Why is one time any better than another?"

There had been a wistfulness, so rarely in Martin's voice, that Rose had
detected it instantly. After all, why should she keep him waiting
when he needed her so much, she had thought tenderly, all the sweet
womanliness in her astir with yearnings to lift the cloud of loneliness
from his life.

Rose had always believed love a breath of beauty that would hold its
purity even in a hovel, but she had not been prepared for the sordidness
that seemed to envelop her as she crossed the threshold of the first
home of her married life. Martin, held in the clutch o