A hot wave of unease, almost of remorse, swept over Bunting. Ellen
would never have spent that penny on herself--he knew that well
enough--and if it hadn't been so cold, so foggy, so--so drizzly,
he would have gone out again through the gate and stood under the
street lamp to take his pleasure. He dreaded with a nervous dread
the glance of Ellen's cold, reproving light-blue eye. That glance
would tell him that he had had no business to waste a penny on a
paper, and that well he knew it!

Suddenly the door in front of him opened, and he beard a familiar
voice saying crossly, yet anxiously, "What on earth are you doing
out there, Bunting? Come in--do! You'll catch your death of cold!
I don't want to have you ill on my hands as well as everything else!"
Mrs. Bunting rarely uttered so many words at once nowadays.

He walked in through the front door of his cheerless house. "I
went out to get a paper," he said sullenly.

After all, he was master. He had as much right to spend the money
as she had; for the matter of that the money on which they were now
both living had been lent, nay, pressed on him--not on Ellen--by
that decent young chap, Joe Chandler. And he, Bunting, had done
all he could; he had pawned everything he could pawn, while Ellen,
so he resentfully noticed, still wore her wedding ring.

He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew
she grudged him his coming joy. Then, full of rage with her and
contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a
very mild, oath--Ellen had very early made it clear she would