"The steam pipes, I suppose," she returned scornfully, "and the price of eggs, and whether we are going to be able to pay our bills next month or not." "Don't be so unkind, Edith," said her husband, with an expression of pain. Her remark had hurt him, and, although she realized it, she somehow refused to admit to herself that she regretted it. "It's true, isn't it?" she asked. "Surely you realize that I am doing the best I can," he replied slowly. "I can't do any more." "Well, suppose I do. Does that make it any easier?" She felt angry and annoyed, first with Donald because he seemed unable to realize how barren her life with him was, and then with herself because she had allowed herself to become involved in this useless discussion. Donald, she knew, would always be the same. It was hopeless to expect him to change, or to try, by argument, to make him do so. "Are you angry because I couldn't afford to get you that new hat for Easter?" he asked, as he began to refill his pipe. This falling back upon man's universal belief that a woman's happiness or unhappiness depends solely upon her clothes annoyed her still further. "Don't talk like a fool, Donald," she exclaimed, throwing down her sewing angrily. "I'm tired, that's all. For eight years I've darned stockings, collected trading stamps, done my own housework, and tried to imagine that the hats I've trimmed myself looked as though they came straight from Paris. When a woman has done that for eight years, she has a right to be tired." "But, Edith, it will not always be that way. You know how I am working for the future." Mrs. Rogers picked up her sewing and resumed her air of patient resignation. "The future is a long way off. When it comes, if it ever does, I shall probably be so old that I won't care what sort of hats I wear." "Haven't I had to endure it all, as well as you? Don't you suppose it hurts me not to be able to give you everything you wish?" "It's different with a man." She smiled a trifle bitterly, as she spoke. "You have your business, your friends, your ambitions. In ten years I shall be an old woman; you will be just ready to enjoy yourself." Donald rose from the desk and began to walk about the room nervously. He was too sincerely fond of Edith to want to quarrel with her, and he knew, as well as she did, the truth of what she had just said. After all, he thought, perhaps the woman does have the worst of the matrimonial bargain, in circumstances, at least, such as those with which he and Edith were struggling. "There's nothing I would care about enjoying, Edith, without you. Surely you know that." "I know. It's very good of you to feel that way. It's lack of money, I suppose, after all, that makes everything so hard." "I can't do the impossible, Edith. You know what my income is, and what I have been scraping and saving for all these years."