He looked down at her. His first painful impression was that she had grown very thin; he had not noticed it before. However, this impression passed, and he watched her with the ardent eye of an artist. Her gray eyes stared out troublously, vaguely, from the shelter of the great elm, at the heavy rain falling in the open. He loved her intensely. I expect he loved her more, in his steady, level-headed way, than she loved him. He never talked about it; these women with so many words of love are very often only words. She must have been very tiresome, judging from what he told me. She was always fondling him; a man gets sick of that. He said that she seemed to have a sort of agonized remorse in her tenderness. I could have explained. Suddenly the rain stopped, and a bar of yellow broke the slaty sky. “Come on,” he said; “never mind the rushes.” “But I do mind.” She picked up the bundle, with its wide, delicate flowers and sword-like leaves, and carried it against her breast, making the front of her bodice dark with moisture. As they went along in the watery sun she shivered. “You’ve caught cold. I----” “Told me so. I haven’t caught cold. But I have saved from utter ruin the gown which took you some pains to design.” Then she added, catching his loose hand in hers: “I only _say_ stupid things. I get a little tired of being different, that is all; no doubt other people get just as tired of being the same.” They were in sight of their cottage gate. Three-year-old Betty, their only child, was hanging over it, hauling a kitten round the middle. Adeline pulled up in the shadow of the irregular hazel hedge. “You promise?” Her eyes were half mirthful, half tragic. “Promise what?” “How men forget! To--put it in the paper.” He turned on her angrily. “This is unlike you--even you. This is too ridiculously, wickedly morbid.” “Isn’t it? But--but you promise just the same.” “Yes, anything--if you’ll go up at once and change your shoes,” he returned a little moodily, and kissing her with habitual carelessness on the hot lips she held up. She ran through the gate. He heard her humming lightly as she went upstairs. He picked up baby Betty with a sigh, and swung her on his back, feeling grateful that she at least had no complex emotions. A sugar-stick would bare her little simple soul. * * * * *