When Laura McHenry quietly turned her back upon the wealthy and desirable suitor her family had decided she should marry, and gave her hand to William May, a middle-aged lawyer of no particular standing or prospects, everybody decided that she had thrown herself away.

Mr. May began his married life upon a wind-fall of fifteen hundred dollars, his largest fee in a dozen years. A pretty house in Richmond was leased for a year, and the delightful experience of buying new furniture and disposing it to the best advantage gave the young wife such happy occupation for the first two months that she was always in a sunny humor, full of brightness and variability, and that kind of independent submissiveness which charms a man who likes

to see a woman much occupied with household affairs, and with himself, as the center of the household. Her pretty show of activity amused him. He said she made occupation for herself in moving the furniture from one place to another and then back again. One of his jokes was to ask her where he should find the bed when he came home. And upon this she would pretend to pout, and then they would kiss each other without the least awkwardness or shame-facedness, and he would go off to his work with a pleasant sense of security in the devotion of his lovely wife, while she would carry in her mind all day long the picture of his smiling face, and love him for every pretty speech and admiring look.

They were really happy. And it lasted quite six months, till all the fifteen hundred dollars had been drawn out of the bank, except the bare moiety necessary to keep the account.

When Dinah's wages were a month over-due, her substantial presence disappeared out of the kitchen, and Laura's dainty white hands made acquaintance with dish-mops, stove-lifters and brooms. Such an ignoramus as she found herself! And with what zeal she bent her mind to the study of cookery books and the household corners of the newspapers. And brains told. She left the flour out of her first cake, but her second one was a triumph of art, and muffins, veal cutlets and custards came out from under her clever fingers with a delicacy and deftness that surprised herself and gratified May immensely. Although he was sorry to have her work in the kitchen, and sorry to find her now too tired to sing to him in the evenings with the same spirit and freshness that used to breathe through her songs. But the worst thing was that fatigue and unending attention to details, united to those perpetual interruptions from the door-bell which drive busy women almost distracted, had their effect upon Laura's delicate frame. She grew "nervous," which is often a misnomer for combined worry and distasteful labors. It will seem to the inexperienced that the housekeeping for two people, in a convenient little house, should have been a mere bagatelle to a clever woman. Perhaps it would have been if Laura had not had her profession to learn as well as practise. She had not been brought up to housework, but to sing. Music had always been so much a part of her life that she no more thought of giving up her daily study hours than she would have thought of giving up her William. It was not that she chose to work at her piano three or four hours a day after her morning housework was done, but that it simply did not occur to her to do otherwise. She usually forgot or neglected to take any lunch, and by dinner time had no appetite, which had its conveniences, for it was rapidly coming to pass that the dinners she could compass upon the scanty and irregular supplies of money she received were scarcely sufficient for more than one person, and she contrived that her husband should be that person.

She had a thousand devices for inducing him to eat the bit of steak, the single cup-custard, or the slice of fish. He was far from realizing that his delicately fair wife, with her dainty tastes, was illy nourished upon the tea and toast to which she often confined herself. Nor did Laura realize it.

But after all, it was not the housework, the scanty food, nor even the lack of variety and refreshment in her life that was beginning to tell heavily upon her health, that was spoiling her beautiful disposition and making her apprehensive and irritable. It was something more terrible to a loving woman, honoring and admiring her husband with all her soul, than all these things combined.

The third anniversary of their wedding-day came. Laura remembered what day it was as she opened her eyes in the early dawn. A sigh escaped her before she knew it. The tendency to meditate, as Nathaniel Hawthorne observed, makes a woman sad. Laura had always been thoughtful; lately—being much alone and having some matters to think about not tending to raise her spirits, she had insensibly become sober.

She put her feet out of bed into a pair of worn slippers, and shaking down a heavy mass of dark brown hair that matched her eyes in color, made her toilet without waking her husband, who slumbered serenely till within ten minutes of the breakfast hour, when she called him, meeting with a not overgracious response.

The little dining-room had a pleasant and comfortable air this chilly September morning. The little round table bore a glass containing a sprig or two of red geranium from the pot in the window, and the coffee-urn of nickel was polished till it shone like silver.

Mr. May came in after keeping her waiting fifteen minutes, and after helping her and himself to oatmeal, began to read the newspaper that lay at his plate in apparent forgetfulness of everything else. He was a stout, rather short man, with large, luminous brown eyes that never seemed to be looking at anything in particular. A full beard and mustache sprinkled with gray hid a mouth that in his youth had made the lower part of his face strongly resemble that of Peter the Great. There was some quality about him that caused one to dread arousing his anger; a strong sense of his own importance, perhaps. Some persons have the gift of reflecting their own egotism into the minds of others, rendering themselves formidable entirely through an appeal to the imagination.

Laura was a tall, gracefully-formed woman, with a presence that promised to become majestic with increasing years. Yet at heart she was timid and sensitive as a delicate child, needing affection and encouragement in the same measure; the last woman in the world for a man who lived entirely within himself, and to whom a wife was an adjunct, to be put on and off at his pleasure. Yet May had in regard to her—and in regard to all other things—a conscience void of offense. He took credit to himself for having given her her heart's desire in his love.

The door-bell jangled sharply. May looked up.

"If that is the landlord," he said impressively, "I don't want to see him."

"What shall I tell him?" asked Laura.

"Tell him anything you please!" The tone was sternly impatient this time.

She went slowly into the narrow hall, and after a momentary parley with some one who spoke in a high, angry voice, returned with a bill which she laid before him without a word.

"Tell him I will—attend to it."

"He says——" she murmured deprecatingly, but got no further; the lowering expression that came over his face was too lacerating to her feelings. She preferred confronting the irate butcher again.

But there was a lump in her throat as she quietly resumed her seat. One of her ideas of the "protection" promised by the marriage ceremony had been a shielding from the roughness of persons of this sort. Why did he ask her to stand between him and the landlord, the coal man and the butcher? Why, oh, why, was there any necessity for these evasions and subterfuges? She looked at her husband as he arose at last, after a leisurely breakfast hour, and stood by the window finishing a paragraph in his paper. He was a strong, robust man in the prime of life, with a profession and hosts of acquaintances to help on his interests. Why could he not at least make the small income necessary to keep their very modest establishment going?

The explanation lay in a single fact. May was a man of visionary schemes, always chasing some will-o'-the-wisp which promised fortune and distinction, finding his pleasure in holding honorary posts at his political club, which gave him a chance to talk and repaid him in a cheaply gained reputation for ability.

Little by little Laura's idealized vision of her husband had faded before the pressure of facts. But she clung to the shreds of her faith as women do hold to their illusions; as they must if the world is to go on and homes continue to exist. There was something still for her to learn, however, and not the easiest lesson that had been set for her.

She set rather indifferently about her practising that afternoon. It seemed to be no matter whether Chopin or Mendelssohn spoke to her soul; both were alike rendered with a cold brilliancy very far removed from her usual sympathetic interpretation. Her thoughts were far away, wandering amid scenes of her girlhood; a happy time, full of social enjoyment, of affectionate family intercourse, of freedom from care, from make-shifts, from the dishonor of debt; a dishonor that bore lightly upon May, with his belief in the future, but that was crushing to her sensitive nature. Idly her fingers wandered, swifter her thoughts flew, till all at once a sentence of homely wisdom from a modern novelist came into her mind: "Many women are struggling under the burden of money-saving when they had far rather spend their energies in money-getting."

She arose impetuously, her eyes suddenly full of light. What had she been thinking of? There was a fund of unused wealth in her fine musical education, in her beautiful voice, a little impaired by hardships, but magnificent still. Here was the way out of all this mirage of poverty; with what she could earn by taking a class in Madame Cable's school combined with her husband's earnings, they could live with comparative ease and comfort. Oh, happiness, oh, relief! Laura's hat and cape were on in ten minutes and a car was taking her down-town to the dwelling of her old teacher, sure of a welcome and of aid. Madame had offered her this position five years ago, just after her graduation, but her mother would not hear of it. Now her mother was two thousand miles away, on a frontier post with Major McHenry, entirely ignorant of the state of affairs in her daughter's household.

What a curiously elusive thing courage is! By the time Laura's finger was on the bell at Madame's door, her breath was coming in gasps, and while she waited in the lofty and handsomely furnished parlor for the coming of her old teacher, all the strength went out of her knees, so that she found it difficult to rise when that stately, self-possessed woman came in with a little silken rustle of skirts and extended hand.

It is so hard to say outright to a friend, "Help me!" And yet, is not the opportunity of giving help and comfort one of the rewards of a successful life? Why do we distrust human goodness? It was the pride in Laura's nature that made her talk of everything else rather than the object of her call, that made her tongue falter and her cheek grow paler, when at length she brought herself to her task.

But fate was not ill-disposed. It happened that Madame needed her services. She had come at an opportune moment, and in a few minutes the business was satisfactorily settled.

"At the same time, my dear," said Madame, folding her soft, fat hands and shaking her head till the emerald drops in her ears emitted flashes of green fire, "I must say that I never like to see a married woman set out to earn money. It is apt to spoil her husband. A man should support his wife. It is his duty and it ought to be his pleasure. And another side of the matter is that women to whom the extra income they can gain by their talents means luxury and possibly extravagance, forget that such competition makes it harder for their needy sisters. Money-making is not such a gracious task. It should be left to those who really need the money."

"I am not going to tell you I need it," thought Laura. Aloud, she said with much indifference:

"Madame, have you any one in your mind you would rather get to take your classes—any one you think would do the work better?"

"No," the teacher acknowledged that she knew no other superior to her old pupil. "To tell you the truth, if I did I should feel it a duty to engage the better worker. The principal of a school like this cannot let her feelings guide her, you know."

"Then as the advantage is mutual," said Laura, a smile breaking over her serious face, "my conscience is at rest. It is a matter of the success of the fittest. My needier sister is not so well prepared for the post as I, and so I get it."

"Really, you are right," murmured Madame, with her head on one side. "But," she added as her visitor rose, "take my advice about one thing: keep your earnings for yourself; they belong to you. Don't let your husband find out that there is a—another capable bread-winner in the house."

Madame had not the highest opinion in the world of Mr. William May. But who lays to heart words of selfish caution? Not the wife who in the glow of comfort and peace arising from the prospect of an income of her own, feels all the old confidence and affection return as she explains matters to her husband with a careful avoidance of any wound to his self-love, and a blissful dwelling upon the pleasure and advantage that is to come to herself in the healthful exercise of her accomplishments.

May was a little afraid their social standing would suffer. He certainly did not like the idea of his wife teaching in a school. It was contrary to all his preconceptions of her domestic, home-loving disposition.

"It is a reflection upon me," he said moodily, adding with a little passionate movement that brought her within his arm, her cheek close to his lips: "I didn't marry you to let you work, my darling!"

She might have answered that he had let her work at harder things, but she did not. She dwelt upon the idea of the comfort a regular occupation was to be to her during the long winter days. She would be much happier and less lonely with something to do. Very little said she of the salary that was an item of so much importance in her mind.

But after he had gone out to his club she got out a little blank book and figured it all away for six months to come. She resolved to leave out of consideration the house-rent and the table. Naturally, William would continue to bear the burden of these responsibilities. Her design was to fill in the vacancies which he was indifferent to. So much for the gas bill, so much for laundry, so much for the seats in church. And something over for the indispensable winter clothing and for the joy of giving. She looked forward to the happiness of hanging a new hat upon the rack in place of dear Will's shabby one, and of supplying a pair of slippers. Bliss and comfort of a little control over circumstances, instead of being compelled to stand helpless and anxious waiting upon the good fortune of another! Could a man have any idea of what this feeling is to a woman? Mr. May could not have had, or he would never have done what he did.

All that first month Laura was buoyed up by the anticipation of that comfortable check she was soon to finger. Cool autumn breezes were beginning to blow, but when first one woman, then another, put on wraps, until her plain undraped gown appeared odd, she merely smiled indifferently and warmed herself with the thought of pay-day. When the farina kettle sprang a leak she laughingly declared it was old enough to be superannuated. A dollar seemed such a trifle to worry over now.

At last it was in her hands. The first earning of her life. With a child's glee she hurried home and displayed it to her husband, enjoying his teasing comments on her sudden accession to wealth. But the dinner had to be cooked, and recalling herself to this duty, she ran into the kitchen, leaving the check behind her on the desk.

"It is all right," said Mr. May, when she looked for it later in the evening. "I put it in my private drawer."

"Oh, yes, it is safer there," she returned easily, and got out her mending basket, humming a gay tune, more light of heart than she had been in many a day.

The next day was Saturday, and she had more morning work to do than usual, but she hurried through it, and by half-past ten she had her hat and gloves on and was rummaging the desk for her check. It was nowhere to be found.

"Impossible that it could have been stolen," she exclaimed. "Impossible! It was not indorsed. No one could use it, even if a thief had made his way in, and that is absurd to think of. It must be here."

Only when every paper had been taken out and scrutinized did she desist from her search, and almost crying with vexation, resigned herself to await her husband's return and ask his advice.

"My check!" she cried breathlessly, almost before he was fairly inside the door. "It is gone!"

He turned with a somewhat puzzled expression at her excited manner.

"The check? Oh, why, that is all right. I put it in the bank this morning."

"You put it in the bank?" repeated Laura slowly. "But how could you? It was not indorsed."

"I indorsed it," he answered rather shortly, annoyed at all this explanation about a mere matter of course. Were not he and his wife one, and was not everything in common between them? It had not entered his head for a single instant that there was anything amiss about a procedure that was to Laura a veritable thunderbolt.

She stood for a moment with her eyes lowered, ashamed for him who thought of nothing less than of being ashamed for himself. It was impossible to reproach him; he was a man whom a breath of censure hardened into rock. While the sunshine of applause and sympathy shone upon him he was debonair and charming, but the first chilling breath of blame brought all the ice in his nature to the surface. She had experienced the change; she dared not encounter it. Besides, it was not in this first instant of a new revelation of his creed that she was to feel all the sense of his moral flexibility. That was reserved for later, when her keen instinct of justice and of individual rights had been outraged again and again. She loved him. To win a smile and a kind word from him what would she not have sacrificed? The mere trifle of money was nothing. It was the feeling of having been unfairly treated, of having been not considered at all where she had every right to consideration. And yet the want of that trifle of money was to make her miserable for a long time to come.

It was hard to be sweet and loving all day Sunday, with a weight of suppressed thought upon her mind, but forbearance nourishes affection, and by Monday she was her own tender, submissive self again. Besides, it had occurred to her that the money was not quite out of her reach; William would give her a check if she asked him for it.

When she made the suggestion he readily assented, and made out one to her for five dollars before he left Monday morning. When she timidly broached the subject again he looked annoyed, and said curtly that the landlord had the money.

"But——" began Laura, flushing hotly, then closed her lips and went quietly about her work. What was there to say? The landlord had to be paid, of course. Only somehow, she had thought that her husband would do that, as he had always managed it before.

But the following month brought Mr. May increasing ill-luck. He would have been a generous and kindly man if he had prospered, and with nothing to bring it to the surface he might have gone through life, his lack of sterling principle unsuspected. He could be generous but not just; he could recognize the rights of others—the right of tradesmen to be paid, the rights of his political comrades to a fulfilment of his promises to them—if everything went well with himself. But to tell the truth in the teeth of disaster, to face an irate creditor, to climb down from his height of vain ambition and lay to heart that vow of duty his childish lips had uttered at his mother's knee—"To labor truly to get my own living, and do my duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call me"—this was what William May had not it in him to perform. And his wife, with her clear moral sense, her unbending Puritan conscience, was doomed to see him fail.

It was not the loss of her money that pained her so much when on the next pay-day she handed him her check in very pity and sorrow for his "bad luck." It was the feeling that do what she would, work as she might, they would never be any better off. And the still more dreary revelation that as her energy was more feverishly applied his diminished. The more earnest and eager she grew to pay off their increasing debts and establish system in their ways, the more careless he became.

She furbished up her wedding gown and made engagements to sing at parlor entertainments. She gave private lessons. And she made money. Some of it she handled herself, but most of it was "put in the bank," and drawn out for a strange purpose: one she disapproved and disbelieved in utterly, but could not positively oppose.

He was so boyishly eager about it, so confident of his success. Through activity unprecedented and maneuverings he did not care to remember, Mr. May had been put up for State senator from his district, and in all the bustle of officering small meetings and petty "bossing," his spirits were so high, and he was so good-humored and affectionate that his wife had not the heart to tell him that this was the worst waste of time in which he had yet engaged. For to her sane, cautious mind it was apparent from the first that he had not the shadow of a chance of being elected.

It happened that on the very eve of the election she was engaged to sing at Carnegie Hall. He could not possibly spare time to take her, and she went down alone, in a car. Her eyes were very bright and a spot of color burned in each cheek. She was beautiful, with the beauty of spirit that has triumphed over flesh. But a physician in the audience whispered to his wife that that lovely woman was far along in consumption. "And she will go quick, too, poor thing!"

The troublesome cough which she had neglected all winter annoyed her more than usual going home, but she was rather shocked than grieved when in the middle of the night a hemorrhage came on. Life was growing hard and duty perplexing. But sheer force of will and affection made her seem better next day, and she would not hear of her husband staying with her. He was pledged to appear elsewhere and she made him go. He did not come in till after midnight, and then—she sat up in sudden terror, listening to that stumbling step, those mumbling speeches! It was not only his election that May had lost that night; his manhood had followed.

Laura turned her face to the wall. Was life to hold this new horror? Ah, that she might escape the next day, with its shame, its sorrow and its pitiful regrets. But what she expected did not come. May was constitutionally incapable of confessing himself at fault. He slept off his intoxication and did not get up until he was quite himself again, cool and non-committal.

"Bad luck again, girlie," he said with an assumption of indifference. "I can't make you Mrs. Senator this time."

"Poor Will!" the wife murmured. "I am sorry, dear."

"You are better?" he asked hastily, struck with her expression. "You must have the doctor."

It was a tardy suggestion, and Laura smiled sadly. The doctor came, however. But all he could do was to hold out those vague hopes which are no comfort to anxious hearts. Before long her mother was sent for, but the dread disease did its rapid work. Laura's great trial to the last was the terrible sense of responsibility that haunted her about the expenses that were being incurred.

"When I am not here, mother, what will he do? Poor fellow, nobody understands him but me."

A little while afterwards she aroused herself from a fit of musing and murmured:

"This awful feeling of helplessness!—and I tried so hard to set things right. I thought when I had a little income of my own that everything would go well."

"You have killed yourself," said her mother, darting a look of reproach at the unconscious husband, who entered the room at this moment.

"Oh, no, don't say that," Laura whispered. "I only did what I wanted to do. Will and I have been very happy, only——" But neither the mother nor the husband, bending over the bed, heard the rest of the sentence.