upstairs. Eight days since she had found time to go up there.

Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and
looked at the house--as she used to look at it with him, before they
were married. Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of
wedded joy--it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures. Now, in this
dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks,
continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by
bad fairies in the old tales. In thought she entered the
well-proportioned door--the Gate of Happiness--and a musty smell greeted
her--she had forgotten to throw out those flowers! She turned to the
parlor--no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a
day to keep that room as she liked it.

From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the
exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each
one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in--and the work
undone.

"If I were an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and
common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough--in my own
work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any
better than I do.--He don't have to!--and then such a wave of bitterness
rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch
the crib--the other to her husband.

He awakened instantly. "What is it, Dear?" he asked. "Too tired to
sleep, you poor darling? But you do love me a little, don't you?"

"O _yes_!" she answered. "I do. Of _course_ I do! I'm just tired, I