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Margaret turned a grimy corner, and was joined by one of her boarders, a cheerful little army wife.

“Well, we’ll miss Mr. Kirby, I’m sure,” said little Mrs. Camp, as they mounted the steps. “And by the way, Mrs. Kirby, you won’t mind if I ask if we mayn’t just now and then have some of the new towels on our floor–will you? We never get anything but the old, thin towels. Of course, it’s Alma’s fault; but I think every one ought to take a turn at the new towels as well as the old, don’t you?”

“I’ll speak to Alma,” said Margaret, turning her key.

A lonely, busy autumn fellowed, and a winter of hard and thankless work.

“I feel like a plumber’s wife,” smiled Margaret to Mrs. Kippam, when in November John wrote her of a “raise.”

But when he came down for two days at Christmastime, she noticed that he was brown, cheerful, and amazingly strong. They were as shy as lovers on this little holiday, Margaret finding that her old maternal, half-patronizing attitude toward her husband did not fit the case at all, and John almost as much at a loss.

In April she went up to Applebridge, and they spent a whole day roaming about in the fresh spring fields together.

“It’s really a delicious little place,” she confided to Mrs. Kippam when she returned. “The sort of place where kiddies carry their lunches to school, and their mothers put up preserves, and everybody has a surrey and an old horse. John’s quite a big man up there.”

After the April visit came a long break, for John went to Chicago in the July fortnight they had planned to spend together; and when he at last came to New York for another Christmas, Margaret was in bed with a bad throat, and could only whisper her questions. So another winter struggled by, and another spring, and when summer came Margaret found that it was almost impossible to break away from her increasing responsibilities.

But on a fragrant, soft October day she found herself getting off the early train in the little station; and as a big man waved his hat to her, and they turned to walk down the road together, they smiled into each other’s eyes like two children.

“Were you surprised at the letter?” said John.

“Not so much surprised as glad,” said Margaret, coloring like a girl.

They presently turned off the main road, and entered a certain gate. Beyond the gate was an old, overgrown garden, and beyond that a house–a broad, shabby house; and beyond that again an orchard, and barns and outhouses.

John took a key from his pocket, and they opened the front door. Roses, looking in the back door, across a bare, wide stretch of hall, smiled at them. The sunlight fell everywhere in clear squares on the bare floors. It brightened the big kitchen, and glinted in the pantry, still faintly redolent of apples stored on shelves. It crept into the attic, and touched the scored casement where years ago a dozen children had recorded their heights and ages.

Margaret and John came out on the porch again, and she turned to him with brimming eyes. It suddenly swept over her, with a thankfulness too deep for realization, that this would be her world. She would sit on this wide porch, waiting for him in the summer afternoons; she would go about from room to room on the happy, commonplace journeys of house-keeping; would keep the fire blazing against John’s return. And in the years to come perhaps there would be other voices about the old house; there would be little shining heads to keep the sunlight always there.

“Well, Margaret, do you like it?” said John, his arm about her, his face radiant with pride and happiness.

“Like it!” said Margaret. “Why, it’s home!”

IV

So the Kirbys disappeared from the world. Sometimes a newcomer at Margaret’s club would ask about the great portrait that hung over the library fireplace–the portrait of a cold-eyed woman with beautiful pearls about her beautiful throat. Then the history of poor, dear Margaret Kirby would be reviewed–its triumphs, its glories, Margaret’s brilliant marriage, her beauty, her wit. These only led to the final tragic scenes that had ended it all.