bought for her. Charlotte pinned the neck of her muslin gown with the sham turquoise brooch which she had not worn since her marriage, because John disliked it, and tied on a dotted veil, which he had also prohibited, over her face.

Then she went out of the house, locked the front door, put the key under the blind, and took the next car to town. She had not a cent with her, not enough to pay her fare. She knew the conductor, and asked him, with a revival of her old childishly familiar manner, to trust her till the next time, which he was glad enough to do, paying her fare out of his own pocket.

'You're a great stranger,' he said, with a smile, as he slipped back along the foot rail. He was quite a young man.

'Yes, I am,' assented Charlotte; but I guess I shan't be so now.'

The conductor gave her a half admiring, half curious look. Her eyes showed that she had been weeping, but there was an expression of gaiety that was almost abandon on her face. Her cheeks reddened in the fresh wind, her flaxen hair tossed about her temples. People turned to look at her.

Charlotte stopped the car at Crosby's store.

That night, when John Woodsum came home and found his house redolent with sweets and spices, and the shelves laden with poor Charlotte's multiplicity of cakes, and she gone, he was overwhelmed by misery, and the more so by the very absurdity and grotesqueness of the guise in which it came. He looked at the cakes, and laughed while he groaned. It was like a strong man being drowned in sugar and water. He had not a doubt of it at all. These miserable, soggy attempts at cake, filling all his dishes, had their unequivocal significance in his eyes. Under a quiet and taciturn exterior he was abnormally sensitive and suspicious. He judged this to be a manifesto of all renunciation of wifely obedience, and a mockery. Still he made up his mind. that she would return, and he would be very mild with her.

'After all she is childish, and I ought to have seen it when I married her,' he argued, without so much regret at a false step for himself as pity for her. She might have done better with a rich man like Crosby, who could have kept a hired girl,' he thought.

He did not disturb the cakes, but kindled the kitchen fire anew, and sat down to wait for his wife; but she did not come. The fire went out. At nine o'clock he began to believe that she

had rebelled utterly-made a mock at him and his frugality, and set in open defiance of him this enormous waste upon his very heart.

Then he went out to the barn, put the old horse in the buggy, and drove to town. It was a very hot night. As he passed an ice-cream saloon he looked in the windows, glittering with electricity and astir with electric fans. At a table full in sight sat Crosby, Maud Lockwood, and his wife. Charlotte had both round elbows on the table, and as he passed she looked up with that sweet, soft giggle of hers-more like an ebullition of general enjoyment than actual mirth-and it seemed as if she saw him, but she did not.

John tied his horse and entered. He stood beside the table before they saw him. Then Charlotte looked up, and her jaw dropped and her blue eyes stared. But Maud Lockwood sprang to her feet, glowing with anger.

You have come to to look for your wife, have you, Mr. Woodsum?' said she. Well, she is making me a visit, and she is going to stay some time; and I am going to see that she has enough to eat, so she will look a little more as she used to before you married her. She is having some ice-cream now. I doubt if she has had any since she was married. You can go

home and let her alone; she is staying with me.'

John gave one glance at Charlotte, and opened his mouth to speak; but she looked at him as a bird might have, with a round-eyed fascination of terror. That stung him into a coldness and stiffness of pride which seemed like death. John went out, saying not a word, turned his old horse about, and went home.

Then he recommenced his solitary life. He packed away all Charlotte's little foolish flipperies and trinkets which he had held in such contempt, because they did not harmonise with his conception of her. Could he have put his feeling about them into words he would have inquired the need of hanging ribbons and laces upon a flower for its further adornment. But poor Charlotte was no flower-only a girl with many follies of nature upon which the follies of life could catch and cling.

John Woodsum's nature was so essentially masculine that these little girlish possessions touched him only to that selfsame contempt as he thrust them into the trunk. Yet he loved his wife, and his heart was well-nigh breaking for the loss of her,

though she had, as he believed, deserted him and mocked him with such an extravagance of absurdity that it seemed to fairly rob his grief of its own dignity. John was not jealous; no doubt as to his wife's faithfulness ever dawned upon him. That was no more in his conception of her than her helpless shallowness of nature had been.

John sent the trunk to his wife, who had left Maud Lockwood and was boarding in her old quarters and working at the ribbon counter at Crosby's. He was painfully conscious and angry at himself for it when he gave the address to the express-man who took the trunk away. He knew that he knew-that all the neighbours knew. One morning the woman who lived in Eliza Green's house sent him some muffins for breakfast, and he sent them back.

'Thank your mother, and tell her I've had my breakfast,' he said to the little round-faced boy who bore them aloft in both hands.

That night the woman told Eliza Green; and Eliza for some reason felt indignant almost to repulsion with John's wife when she stood next her at the ribbon counter the following day.

Charlotte was prettier than when she had stood there before, for the little shade of unhappiness and anxiety on her face accentuated it and gave it an interest beyond that of mere sweetness of colour and outline. She had resumed some of her coquettish tricks of dress, and the sham turquoise again gleamed in her neck ribbon; but she still wore her hair as John had directed.

'Why don't you do your hair the old way? You'd look a heap prettier,' asked Maud Lockwood; and Charlotte giggled and said she didn't know; but she never looped her flaxen locks over her ears as she had been used to do.

Charlotte did not talk as much as before her marriage. Her blue eyes had often a retrospective look. For the first time in her life she had a clearly defined object-a definite goal for progress. She was intent upon saving enough money to replace all the ingredients she had wasted in her luckless cake-making. Her weekly stipend was small; she had almost nothing left after her board was paid, but she saved every penny. She even did her washing in her own room, and dried her clothes overnight in her window. She paid not a cent for car fares, always walking unless some one invited her to ride.

She bought no new trinkets; she went without new flannels when winter came, and wore her old thin ones. Still she could save only penny by penny. She reckoned the cost of the supplies which she had wasted as about fifteen dollars. Then she took cold from wearing damp clothing, only partly dried in her room, and thin flannels, and she was out of the store some weeks, with the doctor and medicine to pay for. Mr. Crosby paid her salary while she was out, and sent her fruit and flowers; and she began to realise that she had only to speak for still more.

'He's gone mad over you,' said Maud Lockwood. 'Why don't you get divorced and marry him?'

Charlotte coloured all over her thin, sweet face and her neck. She had grown very thin during her illness, and strange fancies were always in her brain. She did not feel like her old self at all. Sometimes she experienced a momentary surprise at seeing her familiar face in the glass. Possibly she was not the same. Nobody can tell what changes the indulgence of a foreign trait may work in a character; and it was with Charlotte as if a butterfly had developed a deadly intensity.

It seemed to her as if she could never scrape together that fifteen dollars; but none the less she persevered. She did not definitely plan what would happen should she succeed-whether she would return to her husband or not-but the fifteen dollars

she must have, for some reason. Whether it was love or revenge, or the instinct of blind obedience to a stronger nature, she did not know. She was not equal to self-analysis, but she began to think and grow cunning with that cunning which springs most readily from the greed of acquisition. The next time Mr. Crosby sent her flowers she did what she had never done before-sent him a pretty note of thanks.

Then he wrote to her, sending more flowers and fruit, and begging her not to return to the store until she was entirely restored to health.

Charlotte returned to the store the next week, though she was not able. She was very thin, and she coughed hard. She was indescribably pathetic and pretty, with her hollow blue eyes and her appealing smile, when her employer came to greet her.

She thanked him, and let her hand remain in his. He chided her gently for returning to the store, and invited her to drive. with him that afternoon-the air would do her good-and she consented.

Eliza Green had heard the conversation, and when Mr. Crosby had gone she turned severely to the other girl.

'Do you realise what you are doing?' she asked, with more excitement than she had ever shown. As long as you bear a

man's name you have no right to lay it in the dust.'

But Charlotte stared at her with utterly childish wonder. 'What do you mean, Eliza?' said she. Then she coughed. 'She means that you mustn't flirt with one man till you're quit of another,' said Maud Lockwood clearly, and laughed.

'I am not going to,' Charlotte replied simply between her coughs; but she blushed guiltily, for she had an under-motive which no one suspected.

Charlotte did not get over her cold as she should, perhaps from her continuing to do her washing in her room and wearing poorly aired linen, and perhaps because she did not buy the medicine ordered by her doctor.

Mr. Crosby

On pleasant People did not

After a while she could not be in the store at all. used to send delicacies and sometimes call on her. days he took her to drive in an easy carriage. know whether to talk pityingly or reproachfully. Maud Lockwood defended her stoutly. But neither she nor any one dreamed for a moment of her real aim and motive, which was ridiculous to grotesqueness-she wanted to get that fifteen dollars. She alone knew by what childish wiles and cunning, planned in her sleepless nights while she lay coughing, drenched with the sweat of exhaustion, she brought it about; but Crosby one day brought her something which he had been made to know would please her -a real turquoise brooch set with pearls. The girl's eyes flashed when she saw it. She fairly laughed.

'What a tonic a bit of jewellery is to a woman!' Crosby said, laughing in return.

Thank, oh, thank you!' cried Charlotte. 'Is it mine to do. just what I want to with? Do you mean that?'

'Of course I do,' replied Crosby wonderingly.

That evening after dusk Charlotte stole out of the house, though she had been forbidden the night air. When she returned, stifling her cough on the stairs, lest her landlady should hear her, Crosby's turquoise brooch had been sold, and the fifteen dollars' worth of provisions ordered sent to John Woodsum's.

The next day when John Woodsum returned from work he found the parcels heaped on his porch,