"I know what you're going to say," he had interrupted hastily.
"You think we ought to wait a while longer, but if we're going to
pull together for the rest of our lives why mightn't we just as
well begin now? Why is one time any better than another?"

There had been a wistfulness, so rarely in Martin's voice, that
Rose had detected it instantly. After all, why should she keep
him waiting when he needed her so much, she had thought tenderly,
all the sweet womanliness in her astir with yearnings to lift the
cloud of loneliness from his life.

Rose had always believed love a breath of beauty that would hold
its purity even in a hovel, but she had not been prepared for the
sordidness that seemed to envelop her as she crossed the
threshold of the first home of her married life. Martin, held in
the clutch of the strained embarrassment that invariably laid its
icy fingers around his heart whenever he found himself confronted
by emotion, had suggested that Rose go in while he put up the
horse and fed the stock. "Don't be scared if you find it pretty
rough," he had warned, to which her light answer had lilted back,
"Oh, I shan't mind."

And, as she stood in the doorway a moment later, her eyes taking
in one by one, the murky windows, the dirty floor, the unwashed
dishes, the tumbled bed, the rusty, grease bespattered stove
choked with cold ashes, she told herself hotly that it was not
the dirt nor even the desperate crassness that was smothering her
joy. It was the fact that there was nowhere a touch to suggest
preparation for her home-coming. Martin had made not even the
crudest attempt to welcome her. It would have been as easy for