Julia continued: "To-day's Monday. We're still furnishing, of course, as I told you, but that won't matter, will it? Can you both come to dinner on Thursday and see the two happiest people in the world?" "Edifying as the sight must be--" Marie began with smiling lips. But then she put the baby down and, covering her face with her hands, cried bitterly: "Would the two happiest people in the world like to see the two miserablest people in it?" While her face was still covered, she felt Julia's arms about her, heard her disconcerted voice begging to be told. But when at last Marie looked up, with tears salt and bitter on her cheeks, it was to reply sombrely: "There's nothing to tell." "What has happened?" Julia begged. Marie said slowly, twisting her hands: "I felt, when I came home, after a joy-year which he didn't want to give me the remotest chance of sharing, that--that I could never forgive him for all those years of losing my health and looks, those years of work and worry and child-bearing; those years of quarrelling and grudging; those dead, drab, ugly, ordinary married years. And so...." "And so, my dear?" "And so I have not forgiven him. He killed the love in me. There is no more for him." "If there is no more," said Julia, with a sudden instinct, "why do you cry, my dear? And why does this hurt you so?" "To--to see you so happy," Marie whispered up to her, "to see you and Desmond as Osborn and I once were." "And as you want to be again, my dear, if you only knew it." "It's too late for that." "Marie, what do you mean?" "I told him to make his own life. I'm not a dog-in-the-manger woman, anyway. What I don't want I'll give away freely." "What can you mean?" "I've given him away." The knowledge that had come upon her in the car that Saturday afternoon made her voice grim. "He's gone elsewhere," she said; "I feel it; I know it. A wife can sense these things as a barometer senses rain." "Oh, Marie!" Julia whispered, and for a while there was silence in the room, broken only by the chuckles of the baby-girl. Both women looked down, at the sound, upon the fluffy head and Julia asked, still in a bated whisper: "What do you think you'll do?" "Nothing," said Marie, "above all, nothing. The children will keep us under the same roof. We shall be like thousands of other married people, privately free; publicly tied up tight together in the same dear old knot." Her brief laugh trembled. "Marie, you know you think it _is_ a dear old knot." Marie did not reply. After awhile she said: "We're not coming to dinner with you for a very long while. This morning I've come nearer hating you, Julia, than I've ever done in our lives. I want to hate you because you're so happy; because you've got the love which I want but can never have again." "Are you sure of that?"