She stopped at the hook, the things in her hand. "That's hard on you, Tony, and you getting on so well with your work." She didn't say that she could not have gone on any more ... that the walk she took the week before to Canal Street had been her last; but Fairfax, observing her, rendered keen by his own disappointment, understood. He called her to him, made her sit down on the sofa beside him. "Peter has been better to you than I have," he said sadly. "I've tired you out, my dear, and I've been a selfish brute to you." He saw that his words gave her pain, and desisted. He was going to be nothing more from henceforth but an engineer. He would shut the studio and take her out on Sundays. She received his decision meekly, without rebuffing it, and he said-- "Molly, if I had not come along, I reckon you would have married Peter Rainsford. There! Don't look like that!" "Tony," she replied, "I'd rather be wretched with you--if I were, and I'm not, dear. I'd rather be unhappy along of you than the happiest queen." He kissed her hand with a gallantry new to her and which made her crimson, and half laugh and half cry. She went early to bed, and Antony, alone in the kitchen, raked down the coals, covered the fire in the stove, heard the clock tick and the whistles of the boat on the river. In the silence of the winter night, as it fell around him, he thought: "I reckon I'll have to try to make her happy, even if I cut out my miserable talent and kill it." And as he straightened himself he felt the Presence there. The solemn Presence that had come with her to his workshop and kept him company, and it was so impressive that he passed his hand across his forehead as though dazed, and opened the door of his bedroom to see her and be assured. She was already asleep; by her side, the little basket prepared, waited for the life to come. He stepped in softly, and his heart melted. He knelt down and buried his face in the pillow by her side, and without waking she turned her face toward him in her sleep. CHAPTER XXXII He did not go to the studio for a month, but though he remained with her the poor girl profited little by his company. He smoked countless cigarettes, in spite of the fact that he had doctor's bills to look forward to. In the long winter evenings he read books that he fetched from the library while the blizzards and storms swept round the window, and the next day his duties stared him in the face. He dreamed before the stove, his cigarette between his fingers, and Molly watched him; but Rainsford, when he came, did not find her any more alone. Finally, in the last Sunday of January, after the noon dinner, she fetched him his coat and muffler. "I can't let you stay home any more like this, Tony," she told him. "Take your things and go to the studio; I'm sure you're dying to, and don't hurry back. I'm feeling fine."