her children, and also procured for her an engagement as music teacher to
other families in the town. It was tacitly understood amongst the ladies
who engaged her that they should always make it appear as if Bertha had
undertaken these lessons only for the sake of a little distraction, and
that they paid her for them only because they could not possibly allow
her to devote so much time and trouble in that way without some return.
What she earned from this source was quite sufficient to supplement her
income to an amount adequate to meet the demands of her mode of living,
and so, when time had deadened the first keen pangs and the subsequent
sorrow occasioned by her husband's death, she was again quite contented
and cheerful. Her life up to then had not been spent in such a way as to
cause her now to feel the lack of anything. Such thoughts as she gave to
the future were occupied by scarcely any other theme than her son in the
successive stages of his growth, and it was only on rare occasions that
the likelihood of marrying a second time crossed her mind, and then the
idea was always a mere fleeting fancy, for as yet she had met no one whom
she was able seriously to regard in the light of a possible second
husband. The stirrings of youthful desires, which she sometimes felt
within her in her waking morning hours, always vanished as the day
pursued its even course. It was only since the advent of the spring that
she had felt a certain disturbance of her previous sensation of
well-being; no longer were her nights passed in the tranquil and
dreamless sleep of heretofore, and at times she was oppressed by a
sensation of tedium, such as she had never experienced before. Strangest
of all, however, was the sudden access of lassitude which would often
come over her even in the daytime, under the influence of which she
fancied that she could trace the course of her blood as it circled
through her body. She remembered that she had experienced a similar
sensation in the days when she was emerging from childhood. At first this
feeling, in spite of its familiarity, was yet so strange to her that it