which had been the source of so much secret blame and secret exultation was somehow accounted for: it was a waif out of the country of Rosalind and Juliet. The sense of a vital readjustment remained with me all that day; there had been after all, in the common phrase, "something between us." But I explained the recrudescence of memory on the basis that it was from Helmeth Garrett that I had first heard of Chicago and Modjeska. I came back to Higgleston reasonably well, with some fine points of achievement twinkling ahead of me, to have my new-found sense of direction put all at fault by the trivial circumstance of Tommy's having papered the living room. The walls when we took the house, had been finished hard and white, much in need of renewing, from the expense of which our immediate plunge into the cares of a family had prevented us. Casting about for any way of ridding it against my return, of the sadness of association, Tommy had hit upon the idea of papering the room himself in the evenings after closing hours, and by way of keeping it a pleasant surprise, had chosen the paper to his own taste. Any one who kept house in the early 80's will recall a type of paper then in vogue, of large unintelligent arabesques of a liverish bronzy hue, parting at regular intervals upon Neapolitan landscapes of pronounced pinks and blues. Tommy's landscapes achieved the added atrocity of having Japanese ladies walking about in them, and though the room wanted lighting, the paper was very dark. It must have cost him something too! From the amount of his salary which he had remitted for my hospital expenses he could hardly have left himself money to pay for his meals at Higgleston's one doubtful restaurant. The appearance of the kitchen, indeed, suggested that he had made most of them on crackers and tinned ham. I was glad to have discovered this before I said to him how much better it would have been for him to send me the money and let me select the paper in Chicago. What leaped upon me as he waved the lamp about to show me how cleverly he had matched the borders, was the surprising, the confounding certainty that after all our shared sorrow and anxiety we hadn't in the least come together. I had lived in the house with him for two years, had borne him a child and lost it, and he had chosen this moment of heartrending return, to give me to understand that he couldn't even know what I might like in the way of wall papers.