"See Nellie! Take her back!" he exclaimed. "Give her further opportunity to exercise her brand of wifehood on me and motherhood on the boys!" "James, if you do, I'll never forgive you!" cried his sister. "If you tear up this comfortable, healthful place, where you are the honoured head of your house, and put your boys back where you found them, I'll go home and stay there; and you can't blame me." "Miss Winton didn't ask me to go back," he explained; "that couldn't be done. I saw and examined the deed of gift of the premises to the city. The only thing she could do would be to buy it back, and it's torn up inside, and will be in shape for opening any day now, I hear. The city needed a Children's Hospital; to get a place like that free, in so beautiful and convenient a location--and her old friends are furious at her for bringing sickness and crooked bodies among them. No doubt they would welcome her there, but they wouldn't welcome her anywhere else. She must have endowed it liberally, no hospital in the city has a staff of the strength announced for it." "James, you are wandering!" she interrupted. "You started to tell me what Miss Winton asked of you." "That I bring Nellie here," he explained. "That I make her mistress of this house. That I put myself and the boys in her hands again." "Oh good Lord!" ejaculated Mrs. Winslow. "James, are you actually thinking of _that?_ Mind, I don't care for myself. I have a home and all I want. But for you and those boys, are you really contemplating it?" "No!" he said. "All I'm thinking of is whether it is my duty to hunt her up and once more convince myself that she is heartless vanity personified, and utterly indifferent to me personally, as I am to her." "Suppose you do go to her and find that through pique, because you made the move for separation yourself, she wants to try it over, or to get the boys again--she's got a mint of money. Do you know just how much she has?" "I do not, and I never did," he replied. "Her funds never in any part were in my hands. I felt capable of making all I needed myself, and I have. I earn as much as it is right I should have; but she'd scorn my plan for life and what satisfies me; and she'd think the boys disgraced, living as they are." "James, was there an hour, even in your honeymoon, when Nellie forgot herself and was a lovable woman?" "It is painful to recall, but yes! Yes indeed!" he answered. "Never did a man marry with higher hope!" "Then what----?" marvelled Mrs. Winslow. "Primarily, her mother, then her society friends, then the power of her money," he answered. "Just how did it happen?" she queried.