With "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some new knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well--that was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was _not_ looking well! But she would make him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able to think of nothing, of no one, but her--he had not always thought of her. _She would not pity herself._ She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effort; men liked you to laugh. She had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of his sleeping, _dead_ face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he didn't look well. Oh, when he came home to-night----! She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply blue. The children exclaimed over their "pretty mama." She looked younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. She could not help saying: "How lovely you are, Lois! And you're all dressed up, too; do you expect any one?" "Only Justin," said Lois. "Only Justin"! The words brought an exquisite joy with them--only Justin, the one man in all the world for her. There was but a half-hour now until dinner-time. It had passed, and he had not come; but he was often late-- Still he did not come; that happened too, sometimes. The two women sat down to dinner alone, at last. The baby woke up afterward, an unusual thing, and wailed, and would not stop. Lois, divested of her rich apparel and once more swathed in a loose, shabby gown, rocked and soothed the infant interminably, while Dosia, her efforts to help unavailing, crouched over a book down-stairs, trying to read. After an interval of quiet she went up-stairs, to find Lois at last lying down. "It's eleven o'clock, Lois; I think I'll go to bed. Shall I leave the gas burning down-stairs?" "Yes, please do; he can't get anything now but the last train out." "And you don't want me to stay here with you?" "No--oh, no." As once before, Lois waited for that train--yet how differently! If that injured feeling rose, for an instant, at his not having sent her word, she crushed it back as one would crush the head of a viper that showed itself between the crevices of the hearthstone. She would not pity herself--she would not pity herself! She knew now that madness lay that way.