"I can't bear being sick! Oh, Laurie, I won't be operated on! I can't bear it!" Her voice was passionate. She shrank, looking smaller among the big pillows. He pushed her into the limbo of invalidism. She did not know how to get out. His kindness was a wall between them. He smoothed her hair. She was crushed under his tolerant hand smoothing away curls from her tear-wet face. "Shall I tell Mamma Farley you are ready for your breakfast?" She gazed at him. Her eyes hurt him. They stabbed him through the silence she made. "Laurie, I think we are going to be so happy and then all at once when you talk about my being sick you seem so far away. You do love me?" She clung to his arm. "Of course." "Then kiss me again." He kissed her. Her terrible hunger hurt and confused him. He would rather not have seen her thin throat that suggested a young swan's, her pointed chin, her eyes, and the reddish hair which had slipped in confusion about her shoulders. The room, filled with her knick-knacks, choked him--her clothes on a chair, some soiled satin slippers, the mirror from which she seemed always to shine, her child asleep--hers and his together. He could not explain himself--felt that he was growing hard. He was ashamed of not loving her enough. Ashamed of the strength it gave him to know that he was not for her--now--that her health was keeping them apart. "I want us to be happier than anybody, Laurie! Your father--you never talk to me about it! That woman out West who had a child by him! It's so--so terrible!" She felt his resentment of her persistent reference to it. There was something drunken in her which made her sling out words that were not wanted. She regretted a little this waste of her hoarded knowledge, but at the same time she was glad. He did not want to talk of it. She felt injured because he did not want to talk to her of it. She leaned against him. The tears ran from her blind uplifted eyes. "That's nonsense, Winnie. What have we to do with them? I want you to be happy, too." He sat down beside her. She felt hopeless, as though she had lost him. "Not just me, Laurie. Both of us." "Of course. Both of us." She was crushed. "You didn't know I knew all about your father, Laurie." "No. I never told you the details, because it didn't seem worth while." "You never tell me anything--not about yourself--or anything." "I didn't think I could tell you anything about myself you didn't know already." "Don't joke! I want you to love me." "I do love you." She was tired. She buried her face in the pillows. He rose from the bed and put on the rest of his clothes, but when he said good-by to her she would not answer him. He outraged the essence of her sex. She was weak. She wanted him to be weaker than she. She felt that he owed it to her. It was a crumb from his strength, she felt, to be weak to her who had to be weak to the whole world. She would not forgive him. * * * * *