sake might blot out the memory of this rounded Del; that, no matter what
the motive with which he married her, he would end by loving his wife
like other people.

She watched him sometimes in the evenings, as he turned his kind eyes
after her over the library book which he was reading.

"I know I could make him happy! I _know_ I could!" she muttered fiercely
to herself.

November blew into December, December congealed into January, while she
kept her silence. Dick, in his honorable heart, seeing that she
suffered, wearied himself with plans to make her eyes shine; brought her
two pails of water instead of one, never forgot the fire, helped her
home from the mill. She saw him meet Del Ivory once upon Essex Street
with a grave and silent bow; he never spoke with her now. He meant to
pay the debt he owed her down to the uttermost farthing; that grew
plain. Did she try to speak her wretched secret, he suffocated her with
kindness, struck her dumb with tender words.

She used to analyze her life in those days, considering what it would be
without him. To be up by half past five o'clock in the chill of all the
winter mornings, to build the fire and cook the breakfast and sweep the
floor, to hurry away, faint and weak, over the raw, slippery streets, to
climb at half past six the endless stairs and stand at the endless loom,
and hear the endless wheels go buzzing round, to sicken in the oily
smells, and deafen at the remorseless noise, and weary of the rough girl
swearing at the other end of the pass; to eat her cold dinner from a
little cold tin pail out on the stairs in the three-quarters-of-an-hour
recess; to come exhausted home at half past six at night, and get the