as in him a
dumb, undying fidelity to the tried and chosen. From the first, before his
apathy came on him, he had hardly ever left her to an evening by herself.
He had had neither eyes nor ears nor voice for any other woman. And though
her face had become the face of another woman, and he hated changes, she
knew that it had never changed for him. He loved her more than any of the
six children she had borne him.

"After all," said Aggie, "do you think it really matters?"

"Do I think what matters?"

"What we've lost."

He looked suspiciously at her, his heavy brain stirred by some foreboding
of uncomfortable suggestion; she had been thinking of Barbara, perhaps.

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't. The flame in the woman's heart was not wholly dead, because he
had kindled it, and it was one with her love of him. The dream they had
dreamed together had lived on for her; first, as an agony, then as a
regret. But the man had passed over into the sensual darkness that is
seldom pierced by pain. Of the pleasures that had once borne him, buoyant
and triumphant, on the crest of the wave, none were left but such sad
earthly wreckage as life flings up at the ebbing of the spiritual tide.

They had come to the dark shores, where, if the captain wavers, the ships
of dream founder with all their freight.

A dull light was already kindling under his tired eyelids.

"I don't know what _you_ feel like," said he, "but I've had enough
sitting-up for one night. Don't you think you'd better go to bed?"

She went, obediently.

VII

A year passed. It was winter again, and the Gattys had had sickness in
their house. Aggie had been ailing ever since the birth of the baby that
had succeeded Emmy. And one evening the doctor had to be summoned for
little Willie, who had croup. Willie, not four years old, was the last
baby but three. Yes, he was only a baby himself; Aggie realized it with
anguish, as she undressed him and he lay convulsed on her lap. He was only
a baby; and she had left him to run about with Arty and Catty as if he
were a big boy. She should have taken more care of Willie.

But the gods took care of Willie, and he was better before the doctor
could arrive; and Aggie got all the credit of his cure.

Aggie couldn't believe it. She was convinced the doctor was keeping
something from her, he sat so long with Arthur in the dining-room. She
could hear their voices booming up the chimney as she mended the fi