arly: they made up the
congregation on Wednesday evenings. But now they neglected this service
and gathered in the upper chambers of the Woman's Building. The
community was going to the dogs. Every man said so to every other man he
met on the square, but no man confided to the other that his wife had
been out until half-past ten o'clock the night before.

One evening Stark Coleman was in the library reading the _Signal_. His
wife came in, seated herself, and overflowed the low rocking-chair on
the other side of the table with her voluminous skirts. She was tall and
very large. Her face was as placid as that of a clock which has just
marked the last hour of the day and has nothing to do but tick-tock
until bed-time.

This was the one hour of the day when they were alone together after the
children had been put to bed. They usually spent it in silence. Probably
no two people in the world have as little to say to one another as a
husband and wife after they have been married a dozen years. Each knows
all the other thinks. They become fearful mind readers of one another's
most secret thoughts. Long ago they settled all their differences in the
struggles of their first ardent loving years. Henceforth one commands
while the other obeys. Everything is finished between them but their
lives. These go on like weary vegetation from which their children
gather the fruit.

Coleman had enjoyed several years of this kind of peace. It never
occurred to him to wonder if his wife did. She had the children. He
liked the quiet evenings after the noise and bustle in the bank, with
his wife for a mere presence. And without being aware of the fact, he
liked the diffidence with which she always awaited his pleasure, never
breaking in rudely upon his rest with her feminine affairs unless he
signified his willingness to listen.

During the past two months, however, he was aware of a different quality
in Mrs. Coleman's silence. She held to it even when he wished to talk,
answering him in monosyllables. She was preoccupied. The senseless
turmoil in which the town had been thrown by the Co-Citizens' agitation
was foreign to all he had ever known of her nature and retiring
disposition, and he was loath to connect her with it. But he could not
help knowing that she was interested, to what extent he did not know,
owing to this growing reserve. Still he did his best to defend her in
his thoughts. She had spent the whole of her married life bearing