“Perhaps I did wrong to marry you,” Dan said, the first day of their return. “The Birge temper in a new fashion. I wanted to hurt some one else because I was hurt ... a pretty cheap way to do, wasn’t it?” They were in the living-room where wedding presents were in huddled groups, for Lorraine brooked no interference such as a “settler” to which many brides are subjected. Everything was shiny new, unbecomingly so; the rugs were scarcely adjusted to the slippery floors, there was an air of dampness because the initial furnace fire was scarcely under headway, price marks were still pasted on the electric fixtures, there was something yet to be done with the landing baseboard as there always is something to be done after one has moved into the supposedly most complete house in the world. No evidence of family life had been introduced into this new and loveless house which was at once the envy and curiosity of the village. Their trunks were unpacked in the front bedroom; the sun parlor waited for Lorraine’s taste in furnishing; a thousand and one details which Dan had dreamed that Thurley would settle with her rapturous enthusiasm now awaited Lorraine’s common sense commands. Lorraine suggested nothing of the girl to Dan; she was a woman, narrow in viewpoint and her comprehensions, pretty in a doll sense, without imagination or artistic taste, some one who would do her share in the hill climbing, who would keep house to the degree of dusting even the tops of the window ledges where no one possibly could look for dust without the aid of a stepladder, but guiltless of exuberance of youth and love of romance. “I knew you always loved Thurley,” Lorraine answered fearlessly. “You knew I always loved you. If Thurley would not marry you and you asked me in her stead, I felt that you would better be married. You might have done some ugly, cheap things, Dan, if you had not been engaged to me. I love you enough to make myself—content, by keeping your house and having your name. I know I’m not Thurley,” she smiled wistfully, “but I’ll always be Lorraine. Some day you may come to care a little more.” “Oh, ’Raine, you care as much as that?” “I can’t say it as I’d like,” was her answer. Dan had gone over to take her gently in his arms. “I’m not good enough for you,” he mumbled, laying his head on her shoulder for a long, silent moment.