silently together in the presence of their children, who knew that they
had been quarrelling, but were easily indifferent to the fact, as
children get to be in such cases; nature defends their youth, and the
unhappiness which they behold does not infect them. In the evening, after
the boy and girl had gone to bed, the father and mother resumed their
talk. He would have liked to take it up at the point from which it
wandered into hostilities, for he felt it lamentable that a matter which
so seriously concerned them should be confused in the fumes of senseless
anger; and he was willing to make a tacit acknowledgment of his own error
by recurring to the question, but she would not be content with this, and
he had to concede explicitly to her weakness that she really meant it
when she had asked him to accept Fulkerson's offer. He said he knew that;
and he began soberly to talk over their prospects in the event of their
going to New York.

"Oh, I see you are going!" she twitted.

"I'm going to stay," he answered, "and let them turn me out of my agency
here," and in this bitterness their talk ended.




V.

His wife made no attempt to renew their talk before March went to his
business in the morning, and they parted in dry offence. Their experience
was that these things always came right of themselves at last, and they
usually let them. He knew that she had really tried to consent to a thing
that was repugnant to her, and in his heart he gave her more credit for