atter of fact and how sensible. They affected no high, nonsensical
sentiments. Weren't they, after all, to be envied, rooted as they were
in their solid simplicity? Why should human beings everlastingly try so
hard to be different? He and Rose would have to get down to a genuine
basis, and the quicker the better. Meanwhile he must remember that,
whether he was glad or sorry, she was there, in his shack, because he
had asked her to come.

As he ate his second helping of the excellent meal, he said pleasantly:
"You do know how to cook, Rose."

Her soft gray-blue eyes brightened. "I love to do it," she answered
quickly. "You must tell me the things you like best, Martin. If I had a
real stove with a good oven, I could do much better."

"Could you? We'll get one tomorrow."

"That'll be fine!" she smiled, eager to have all serene between them,
and as she passed him to get some coffee her hand touched his in a swift
caress. Instantly, Martin's cordiality vanished; his hostility toward
her surged. Even as a boy he had hated to be "fussed over." Well, he
had married and he would go through with it. If only Rose would be more
matter of fact; not look at him with that expression which made him
think of a confiding child. What business had a grown woman with such
trust in her eyes, anyway?

It was quite gone, in the early dawn, as Rose sat on the edge of the bed
looking at her husband. Never had she felt so far from him, so certain
that he did not love her, as when she had lain quivering but impassive
in his arms. "I might be just any woman," she had told herself,
astounded and stricken to find how little she was touched by this
experience which she had always believed bound heart to heart and
crowned the sweet transfusion of affection from soul into soul. "It
doesn't make any more difference to him who I am than who cooks for
him."

Not that Martin had been unkind, except negatively. Intuitively, Rose
understood that their first evening and night foreshadowed their whole
lives. Not in what Martin would do, but in what he would not do, would
lie her heartaches. Yet in her sad reflections there was no bitterness
toward him; he had disappointed her, but perhaps it was only because
she had taught herself to expect something rare, even spiritual, from
marriage. Her idealism had played her a trick.

With the quiet relinquishment of this long-cherished dream, eagerness
for the realization of an even more precious one took posses