"I'm afraid he is. He says I've made my bed and now I must lie in it. He's cut off my allowance entirely. He's raised my wages--a little, and he says it's up to me now to make good--with my wages." There was a minute's silence. The man's eyes were gloomily fixed on the opposite wall. His whole attitude spelled disillusion and despair. The woman's eyes, questioning, fearful, were fixed on the man. Plainly some new, hidden force was at work within Helen Denby's heart. Scorn and anger had left her countenance. Grief and dismay had come in their place. "Burke, _why_ has your father objected so to--to me?" she asked at last, timidly. Abstractedly, as if scarcely conscious of what he was saying, the man shrugged:-- "Oh, the usual thing. He said you weren't suited to me; you wouldn't make me happy." The wife recoiled visibly. She gave a piteous little cry. It was too low, apparently, to reach her husband's ears. At all events, he did not turn. For fully half a minute she watched him, and in her shrinking eyes was mirrored each eloquent detail of his appearance, the lassitude, the gloom, the hopelessness. Then, suddenly, to her whole self there came an electric change. As if throwing off bonds that held her she flung out her arms and sprang toward him. "Burke, it isn't true, it isn't true," she flamed. "I'm going to make you happy! You just wait and see. And we'll show him. We'll show him we can do it! He told you to make good; and you must, Burke! I won't have him and everybody else saying I dragged you down. I won't! _I won't!_ I WON'T!" Burke Denby's first response was to wince involuntarily at the shrill crescendo of his wife's voice. His next was to shrug his shoulders irritably as the meaning of her words came to him. "Nonsense, Helen, don't be a goose!" he scowled. "I'm not a goose. I'm your wife," choked Helen, still swayed by the exaltation that had mastered her. "And I'm going to help you win--_win_, I say! Do you hear me, Burke?" "Of course I hear you, Helen; and--so'll everybody else, if you don't look out. _Please_ speak lower, Helen!" She was too intent and absorbed to be hurt or vexed. Obediently she dropped her voice almost to a whisper. "Yes, yes, I know, Burke; and I will, I will, dear." She fell on her knees at his side. "But it seems as if I must shout it to the world. I want to go out on the street here and scream it at the top of my voice, till your father in his great big useless house on the hill just has to hear me." "Helen, Helen!" shivered her husband. But she hurried on feverishly. "Burke, listen! You're going to make good. Do you hear? We'll show them. We'll never let them say they--beat us!" "But--but--" "We aren't going to say 'but' and hang back. We're going to _do_!" "But, Helen, how? What?" demanded the man, stirred into a show of interest at last. "How can we?" "I don't know, but we're going to do it." "There won't be--hardly any money." "I'll get along--somehow."