he would have said so. It came to her oddly that in all the
twenty-seven years she and her husband had been married this was
the very first time he had let her be tender to him. Oh, his life
had been bleak. Bleak! And she with such tenderness in her heart.
It hadn't been right. From the depths of her rebellion and
forgiveness, slow tears rose. Feeling too intensely, too
mentally, to be conscious of them she sat unmoving as they rolled
one by one down her cheeks and dropped unheeded.

"Rose," he called with a soft hoarseness, "I want to talk to
you."

"Yes, Martin," and she gave his fingers a slight squeeze as
though to convince him that she was there at his side. He felt
relieved. It was good to feel her hand and be sure that if his
body were to give its final sign that life had slipped away
someone would be there to know the very second it had happened.
It was a satisfactory way to die; it took a little of the
loneliness away from the experience.

"Rose," he repeated. It sounded so new, the yearning tone in
which he said it--"Rose!" It hurt. "Isn't it funny, Rose, to go
like this--not sick, no accident--just dying without any real
reason except that I absorbed the poison through a cut so small
my eyes couldn't see it."

"It's a mystery, dear," the little word limped out awkwardly,
"but God's ways are not ours."

"Not a mystery," he corrected, "just a heap of tricks; funny