from the roots of a blighted vigor.

Bessie, increasingly perceptive, began to suspect that what she saw was the
brightness after the storm. She wondered what his long solitary hours were
like when she was away. What must they be, with him helpless, disappointed,
lonely, liable to maddening attacks of nerves? But he assured her that he
was perfectly comfortable; Mammy Dinah was faithful and competent; and he
was really making headway with the German and French that he had taken up
because he could put them down as need was, and because--they might come
in, in some way, some time. "In heaven?" Bessie wondered secretly, but,
enlightened by her own experience, saw the advantage of his being
entertained.

"You're too much alone," she said, feeling for the trouble. "And so am I,"
she added, thoughtfully. She should have noticed his eyes at that last. He
had developed a sort of controlled voracity for endearment, but he never
asked for it. In the old days he had taken his own masterfully, with no
doubts. Now he waited. He did not starve. She cajoled him and coaxed his
appetite and patted the pillows, and made pretty, laughing eyes at him and
fate quite in her habitual manner. Her touch and tone of affection had
never been so free. But in that very fact he found another sting.

"The better I do on the road, the more they keep me out," she was saying.
"We can't go on this way. I've been thinking lately--Could you bear to go
North, Guy, and to live in a city, among strangers? Perhaps at headquarters
there might be an opening for me that would let me settle down."

"What! Cincinnati! Is there any such chance?"

"You'd _like_ it? Why on earth--Are you so bored here?"