rgy that he obscurely accused her of
being the cause of it, and could only be convinced of her innocence when
she offered to give the whole thing up if he said so. When he would not
say so, she carried the affair through to the bitter end, and she did
not spare him some, pangs which she perhaps need not have shared with
him. But people are seldom man and wife for half their lives without
wishing to impart their sufferings as well as their pleasures to each
other; and Mrs. Kenton, if she was no worse, was no better than other
wives in pressing to her husband's lips the cup that was not altogether
sweet to her own. She went about the house the night before closing it,
to see that everything was in a state to be left, and then she came to
Kenton in his library, where he had been burning some papers and getting
others ready to give in charge to his son, and sat down by his cold
hearth with him, and wrung his soul with the tale of the last things she
had been doing. When she had made him bear it all, she began to turn the
bright side of the affair to him. She praised the sense and strength of
Ellen, in the course the girl had taken with herself, and asked him
if he, really thought they could have done less for her than they were
doing. She reminded him that they were not running away from the fellow,
as she had once thought they must, but Ellen was renouncing him, and
putting him out of her sight till she could put him out of her mind. She
did not pretend that the girl had done this yet; but it was everything
that she wished to do it, and saw that it was best. Then she kissed
him on his gray head, and left him alone to the first ecstasy of his
homesickness.

It was better when they once got to New York, and were settled in an
apartment of an old-fashioned down-town hotel. They thought themselves
very cramped in it, and they were but little easier when they found that
the apartments over and under them were apparently thought spacious for
families of twice their numbers. It was the very quietest place in the
whole city, but Kenton was used to the stillness of Tuskingum, where,
since people no longer kept hens, the nights were stiller than in the
country itself; and for a week he slept badly. Otherwise, as soon as
they got used to living in six rooms instead of seventeen, they were
really very comfortable.

He could see that his wife was glad of the release from housekeeping,
and she was growing gayer and seemed to be growing