How could one interest a man like that? There was Eugene Larue—she could interest him! The thought of him always gave her a sense of conscious power; he paid her homage. She did not know what his relations were with other women, but of his with her she was sure: she felt her woman’s kingdom. If you could talk to the soul of a man like that as if he had the soul of an angel, and learn from him what you wanted to know—get his guidance—But Lois was before all things inviolably a wife, with the instinctive dignity of one. The sympathy between her and Eugene Larue was so deep that she feared sometimes that in some brief moment she might reveal in words, to be forever regretted afterwards, conditions which he knew without her telling. To be loved as Eugene Larue would love a woman! But his wife had not cared to be loved that way. Lois took deep, thoughtful counsel of her heart. If they two, she and Eugene, had met while both were free? The answer was what she had known it would be, else she had not dared to make the test—the man who was her husband was the only man who could ever have been her husband. Justin! With “The Woman’s Kingdom” in her hand now, her lips touching the cheek of the soft little darling thing beside her, she felt that some knowledge had been gradually revealed to her, of which she was now really aware only for the first time. Justin was not looking well—that was what Dosia had said. Oh, he was not looking well! But she would make him forget his cares, his anxieties, with this new-found power of hers; she would bewitch him, take him off his feet, so that he would be able to think of nothing, of no one, but her—he had not always thought of her! No, no—she would not remember that, _she would not pity herself_. She would learn to laugh, even if it took heroic effort—men liked you to laugh, she had always taken everything too seriously. The vision of his sleeping, _dead_ face of a month ago frightened her for a moment, painfully; but he had seemed better since, though, as Dosia said, he didn’t look well. Oh, when he came home to-night——! She dressed herself with a new care, putting on a soft yellowish gown with a yoke of creamy lace, unworn for months. The color was more brilliant than ever in her cheeks, her lips redder, her eyes more deeply blue. The children exclaimed over their “pretty mamma”; she looked younger, more beautiful, than Dosia had ever seen her. The latter could not help saying: “How lovely you are, Lois! And you’re all dressed up, too; do you expect anyone?” “Only Justin,” said Lois.