would either scorn him the more or she would come to respect him.
For days the outcome wavered in the balance. They met at the
table only--she sitting preoccupied, he talking quietly with the
boy. At the week end he brought her a roll of bills. "For the
house money," he said briefly; and when she would not reach out a
hand for it, he dropped it in her lap, and went away. But that
night she entered into the talk at the table, a little quiet,
still repressed, and showing her hurt. Willoughby, quietly
deferential, kept to his part of the conversation exactly as if
nothing ugly had occurred between them. His bantering with his
son was genial and affectionate, and once she thought he tried to
include her in this camaraderie. The few last shreds of her
vanity, however, still waved distressing signals of the hurt, and
she evaded it. But she felt strangely alone, notwithstanding;
with an almost unconquerable self-pity she reflected on the
fair-weather friends that had deserted her. A little sense of
comfort trickled into her heart, though, when she thought of her
boy. HE, at all events, had not been affected by the rumble of
drums that had beaten her out of the worldly camp where once she
had commanded. That night Willoughby looked in at her, while she
sat musing over a book, and when she would not look up at him he
went away again. A more complete sense of her loneliness came
over her as the hours passed in the big, silent house. So she
laid down her book, and went up-stairs to her boy's room.

"Who's there?" he cried, awakening from a doze.

"Just I, Willard. I came up to see whether you were all right."

"Oh, yes, I am!" he answered, a little perplexed; it had not been