e means a good many things to me. It means being
kind and making a good home--a real home, not just a place to come to.
It means standing by each other, even if you can't have everything!"

Just for one moment Larry was inclined to end this shilly-shallying by
brute determination. He was that type of man. What did not come
within the zone of his own experience, did not exist for him except as
obstacles to brush aside.

It was a damned bad time, he thought, for Mary-Clare to act up her
book stuff. A man, home after a three months' absence, tired and worn
out, could not be expected, at close upon midnight, to enjoy this
outrageous nonsense that had been sprung upon him.

He must put an end to it at once. He discarded the cave method. Of
course that impulse was purely primitive. It might simplify the whole
situation but he discarded it. Mary-Clare's outbursts were like
Noreen's "dressing up"--and bore about the same relation in Larry's
mind.

"See here," he said suddenly, fixing his eyes on Mary-Clare--when
Larry asserted himself he always glared--"just what in thunder do you
mean?"

The simplicity of the question demanded a crude reply.

"I'm not going to have any more children." Out of the maze of
complicated ideals and gropings this question and answer emerged,
devastating everything in their path. They meant one, and only one,
thing to Larry Rivers.

There were some things that could illume his dark stretches and level
Mary-Clare's vague reachings to a common level. Both Larry and
Mary-Clare were conscious now of being face to face with a grave human
experience. They stood revealed, man and woman. The big significant
things in life are startlingly simple.

The man attacked the grim spectre with conventional and brutal
weapons; the woman backed away with a dogged look growing in her
eyes.

"Oh! you aren't, eh?" Larry spoke slowly. "You've decided, have you?"

"I know what children mean to you, Larry; I know what you mean
by--love--yes: I've decided!"

"You wedged your way into my father's good graces and crowded me out;
you had enough decency, when you knew his wishes, to carry them out as
long as you cared to, and now you're going to end the job in your own
way, eh?

"Name the one particular way in which you're not going to break your
vows," Larry asked, and sneered. "What's your nice little plan?" He
got up and walked about. "I suppose you have cut and dried some little
compromise."

"Oh! Larry, I w