tense look in her eyes, an underglow of excitement, a trembling of her
hands, as she set the table, that did not escape Pearl.

But nothing was said until the children had gone to bed, and then Mrs.
Paine departed from her life-long habit of silence, and revealed to
Pearl the burdens that were crushing her.

She was a thin woman, with a transparency about her that gave her the
appearance of being brittle. Her auburn hair curled over her white
forehead, and snakily twisted around her ivory white ears. Her eyes
were amber-brown, with queer yellow lights that rose and fell as
she talked, and in some strange way reminded Pearl of a piece of
bird's-eye maple. She was dressed in the style of twenty years before,
with her linen collar inside the high collar of her dress, which was
fastened with a bar pin, straight and plain like herself. In the
centre of the pin was a cairn-gorm, which reflected the slumbering
yellow light in her eyes. The color of her face was creamy white, like
fine stationery.

"I thought all my hopes were dead, Pearl," she said with dry lips,
"until you spoke, and then I saw myself years ago, when I came out of
school. Life was as rosy and promising, and the future as bright to me
then as it is to you now. But I got married young--we were brought up
to think if we did not get married--we were rather disgraced, and in
our little town in Ontario, men were scarce--they had all come West.
So when I got a chance, I took it."

Pearl could see what a beautiful young girl she must have been, when
the fires of youth burned in her eye--with her brilliant coloring
and her graceful ways. But now her face had something dead about
it, something missing--like a beautifully-tiled fireplace with its
polished brass fittings, on whose grate lie only the embers of a fire
long dead.

Pearl thought of this as she watched her. Mrs. Paine, in her
agitation, pleated her muslin apron into a fan.

The tea-kettle on the stove bubbled drowsily, and there was no sound
in the house but the purring of the big cat that lay on Pearl's knee.

"Life is a funny proposition, Pearl," continued Mrs. Paine, "I often
think it is a conspiracy against women. We are weaker, smaller than
men--we have all the weaknesses and diseases they have--and then some
of our own. Marriage is a form of bondage--long-term slavery--for
women."

Pearl regarded her hostess with astonished eyes. She had always known
that Mrs. Paine did not look happy; but s