nce more he spoke, his voice had its old resonance.

"Don't take it too hard, Olive," he bade her cheerily. "I was rather a
selfish beast not to have told you earlier, instead of letting you go
on hoping for the unattainable. Feeling better? That's good. Of course,
we were bound to make our moan together; we've been chums too long to
miss that, and there's much more comfort to be taken in a duet of
misery than in a pair of separate solos. Now just tell me once for all
that you are infernally sorry, and we'll consider that matter settled
for all time. Sure you're all right? There's some wine, over in that
closet. No? Well, then I'd like to suggest that your hat is rampantly
askew. Harrowing scenes aren't good for millinery. Yes, that's
straight. Now do haul up a chair, and we'll proceed to talk this thing
out to the bitter end. There's no denying that I've made a mess of life
by my own recklessness; but apparently I've got to go on living, just
the same. Therefore, if you don't mind, suppose we plan how I can go to
work to pick up the pieces."

And while, below stairs, Reed Opdyke's parents were prostrate in their
sorrow, it was in this fashion that Olive Keltridge, sitting by his
side, tried to help him to face forward steadily, and to pick up the
useful fragments left of his broken life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Saint Peter's Parish was fifteen miles and a consequent half-hour of
time from the nearest fount of Christian Science teaching. Hence it
resulted that only rarely had Katharine been used to refresh herself in
the tenets of her new theology. In part, this came from her natural
self-reliance, coupled with an indolence which made her shrink from the
needful effort to catch an early train. In part, it came out of
Brenton's heedful planning. Regretting, as he could not fail to do, his
wife's allegiance to a creed so alien to the shreds of his own belief,
not daring to oppose her absolutely in its observance, he contrived to
strew her path with the accumulated petty obstacles which are so much
more insurmountable than any single great one. He never set back the
hands of the clock to make her miss her train; neither did he lock her
in her room. He merely found out at the last minute that he needed one
of the small personal services which only a wife can give.

And Katharine, by the very nature of her new and optimistic creed, was
powerless to stand out against him. Earlier, fathoming his purposes,
she would