He didn't seem to hear! He hung his head--the veins in his forehead swelled--there were actually tears in his eyes--and the mighty effort he made to restrain a sob was terrible--and six feet of American manhood, as fine a specimen of the animal as the soil can show, animated by a spirit which represented well the dignity of toil and self-respect, stood bowed down with ungovernable grief and shame before a merely ornamental bit of femininity. Fate had simply perpetrated another of her ghastly pleasantries! The woman was perplexed--naturally! But it was evidently the sight of her work, and not the work, itself, that pained her. "Don't cut up so rough, Zeke, please don't," she went on. "I'm very fond of you--you know that--but I detest the odor of the shop, and it is so easy for us both to escape it." He shrank as if she had struck him. Instinctively he must have remembered the cotton mill from which he took her. A man rarely understands a woman's faculty for forgetting--that is to say, no man of his class does. "Doesn't it seem a bit selfish of you," she went on, "to object to my earning nearly three times what you can--and so easily--and prettily?" "I wanted you to be happy with what I could give you." "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not. No use to fib about it! It is too late. Your notions are so queer." "I suppose it is queer to love one woman--and to love her so that laboring for her is happiness! I suppose you do find me a queer chap, because I am not willing that my wife--flesh of my flesh--should flaunt herself, half dressed, to excite the admiration of other men--all for fifty dollars a week!" "See here, Zeke, you are making too much of this! If it is the separation you can't stand--why come, too! I'll soon enough be getting my hundred a week, and more. That is enough for both of us. You can be with me, if that is what you mind!" "If that is what I mind? You know better than that! Am I such a cur that you think, if there were no other reason, I'd pose before the world as the husband of a woman who owes nothing to him--as if I were--" She interrupted him sharply. "What odds does it make--tell me that--which of us earns the money? To have it is the only important thing!" The man straightened up--and squared his broad shoulders. A strange change came over him. He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder, and, for the first time, he spoke with a disregard for self-control, although he did not raise his voice.