He made no answer; but she knew he heard her, and was listening. She went on as only an unsuccessful and unhappy woman could. "Yes, when a woman marries a man that she loves, and gives to him the best that's in her, and, after years, is forced to give up the fight, her very heart, for a piece of paper marked 'divorce,' she is never the same woman she was, and might have continued to be. There are those who say: 'Oh, I don't care;' but I'm going to tell you, they do. The woman lives on apparently gay, but her heart is dead within her." For a long time now, there was silence. Presently, she spoke again. "I am living entirely now for my little boy. He is all I have, and I am willing, I feel, to slave until the skin falls from my fingers, that he may have his chance. I am planning to graduate him as early as possible, and place him in a good northern school in the study of medicine." Again Sidney Wyeth felt a peculiarity about his heart. His thoughts went back into yesterdays, and he recalled all that he had lived and hoped for, and then for one brief moment, another stood before him. Miss Palmer was talking, but her voice seemed to come from far away. Presently she touched him. He looked up and she saw the _something_ in his eyes, and suddenly all she had been feeling passed, as she now observed him closely. Her lips parted. They started to say: "You strange man. You've had your troubles too." And then something else seemed to say: "But you're game, oh you're game. You've lived a bitter pill, a very bitter pill. Look into those eyes; study them, and if you have suffered, and by that suffering you have learned, you can read that a secret lurks therein; you say nothing, but you feel, nevertheless." What Miss Palmer did say when her lips spoke was: "We'd better be going, Mr. Wyeth. It's getting late. Hear the whistle of the furnace, and across from that we hear another. That belongs to the Semet Solvay; but they both are right. It's one o'clock and thirty minutes. Time to canvass; we must go." Her voice was kinder now than ever. They went. CHAPTER FOUR "_Eidder Stuck Up ah She's a Witch_"