Coleman had enjoyed several years of this kind of peace. It never occurred to him to wonder if his wife did. She had the children. He liked the quiet evenings after the noise and bustle in the bank, with his wife for a mere presence. And without being aware of the fact, he liked the diffidence with which she always awaited his pleasure, never breaking in rudely upon his rest with her feminine affairs unless he signified his willingness to listen. During the past two months, however, he was aware of a different quality in Mrs. Coleman's silence. She held to it even when he wished to talk, answering him in monosyllables. She was preoccupied. The senseless turmoil in which the town had been thrown by the Co-Citizens' agitation was foreign to all he had ever known of her nature and retiring disposition, and he was loath to connect her with it. But he could not help knowing that she was interested, to what extent he did not know, owing to this growing reserve. Still he did his best to defend her in his thoughts. She had spent the whole of her married life bearing children very much as a tree puts out leaves every spring. This year it seemed to have occurred to her that she would not have a baby. At least she did not. Instead of that she had taken a verdant new lease on life herself, apparent in the figured muslins which she got from the Cooeperative Store. Coleman attributed her activities, which he called "social," to the fact that she could "go out." She looked now in the soft lamplight like an enormous azalea in full bloom. She sat with folded hands humming a tune, not any known air, but one of those nasal harmonies women sometimes accomplish through their noses as a cat purrs to signify content. The humming annoyed Coleman. Everything annoyed him these days. He fidgeted, slapped one knee violently over the other, and jerked the _Signal_ open as if he would rend it sheet from sheet. "Hu-u-m, hu-e-e-u-m hum!" droned Mrs. Coleman, her eyes fixed upon a large chromo of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus hanging upon the opposite wall. Perspiration broke out in beads upon her husband's brow. He uncrossed his legs and brought his foot down with a bang on the floor. Surely she would understand that he was disturbed. She did not. She went on. "H-u-m, hu-e-e-um, hum----" He leaped from his chair, strutted into the hall and out upon the veranda. "Hu-u-e-e hum!" It followed him through the windows of the library, which were open. He rushed back, his hands clenched behind his back, his whole body inflated with rage. "Agatha!" he exclaimed, planting himself squarely in front of her. "Will you stop making a trombone of your nose?" "You must be nervous," she said, looking up at him serenely. "I _am_ nervous, I'm nearly crazy. This town is going to hell!" "Your language, Stark! If----"