t on. "I'm very
fond of you--you know that--but I detest the odor of the shop, and it
is so easy for us both to escape it."

He shrank as if she had struck him.

Instinctively he must have remembered the cotton mill from which he
took her. A man rarely understands a woman's faculty for
forgetting--that is to say, no man of his class does.

"Doesn't it seem a bit selfish of you," she went on, "to object to my
earning nearly three times what you can--and so easily--and prettily?"

"I wanted you to be happy with what I could give you."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not. No use to fib about it! It is too late.
Your notions are so queer."

"I suppose it is queer to love one woman--and to love her so that
laboring for her is happiness! I suppose you do find me a queer chap,
because I am not willing that my wife--flesh of my flesh--should
flaunt herself, half dressed, to excite the admiration of other
men--all for fifty dollars a week!"

"See here, Zeke, you are making too much of this! If it is the
separation you can't stand--why come, too! I'll soon enough be getting
my hundred a week, and more. That is enough for both of us. You can be
with me, if that is what you mind!"

"If that is what I mind? You know better than that! Am I such a cur
that you think, if there were no other reason, I'd pose before the
world as the husband of a woman who owes nothing to him--as if I
were--"

She interrupted him sharply.

"What odds does it make--tell me that--which of us earns the money? To
have it is the only important thing!"

The man straightened up--and squared his broad shoulders. A strange
change came over him.

He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder, and, for the first time, he
spoke with a disregard for self-control, although he did not raise his
voice.

"Look at me, Dora, and be sure I mean what I say. Leave me to-day, and
don't you ever come back to me. It may kill me to live without you.
Well, better that than--than the other! I married you to live with
you--not merely to have you! I've been a faithful husband to you! I
shall remain that while I live. I never denied you anything I could
get for you! But this I will not put up with! I thought you loved
me--even if you were sometimes vain, and now and then cruel. If you're
ill--if you disappoint yourself, I'll be ready to take care of you--as
I promised. But don't never dare to come back to me otherwise! Unless
you're in want and homeless, unless you can't live, bu