Helen, fully dressed, was sitting at the table, reading a magazine. "Hullo! Sitting up, are you, chicken?" he greeted her, brushing her cheek with his lips. "I told you not to; but maybe it's just as well you did-- I might have waked you," he laughed boyishly. "Guess what's happened!" "Got a raise?" Helen's voice was eager. Her husband frowned. "No. I got one last month, you know. I'm getting a hundred now. What more can you expect--in my position?" He spoke coldly, with a tinge of sharpness. He was wondering why Helen always managed to take the zest out of anything he was going to do, or say. Then, with an obvious effort at gayety, he went on: "It's better than a raise, chicken. Dad's invited us to dinner next Sunday--both of us." "To dinner! Only to dinner?" "_Only_ to dinner! Great Cæsar, Helen--_only_ to dinner!" "Well, I can't help it, Burke. It just makes me mad to see you jump and run and be so pleased over just a dinner, when it ought to be for every dinner and all the time; and you know it." "But, Helen, it isn't the _dinner_. It's that--that dad _cares_." The man's voice softened, and became not quite steady. "That maybe he's forgiven me. That he's going to be now the--the old dad that I used to know. Oh, Helen, I've _missed_ him so! I've--" But his wife interrupted tartly. "Well, I should think 'twas time he did forgive you--and I'm not saying I think there was anything to forgive, either. There wouldn't have been, if he hadn't tried to interfere with what was our own business--yours and mine." There was a brief silence. Burke, looking very white and stern, had got to his feet, and was moving restlessly about the room. "Did you think he was--giving in?" asked Helen at last. "He was very kind." "What did you tell him?" "What do you mean?" "About the dinner, Sunday." "I don't know, exactly. I said--something; yes, I think. I meant it for yes--then." The man spoke with sudden utter weariness. There was another brief silence. A dawning shrewdness was coming into Helen's eyes. "Oh, of course, yes. We'd want to go," she murmured. "It _might_ mean he was giving in, couldn't it?" There was no reply. "Do you think he _was_ giving in?" Still no reply. Helen scowled. "Burke, why in the world don't you answer me?" she demanded crossly. "You were talkative enough a minute ago, when you came in. I should think you might have enough thought of _my_ interests to want us to go to live with your father, if there's any chance of it. And while 'twouldn't be _my_ way to jump the minute he held out his hand, yet if this dinner really means that we'll be going up there to live pretty soon, why--" "Helen!" Burke had winced visibly, as if from a blow. "_Can't_ you see anything, or talk anything, but our going up there to live? It's enough for me that dad just looked at me to-night with the old look in his eyes; that somehow he's smashed that confounded wall between us; that-- But what's the use? Never mind the dinner. We won't go."