and opened a coffee house on the corner near the church, fitting
it up with the magnificence of a saloon, with free lunch counter,
music and singing. It was crowded with working-men and women every
night.

Her work had brought her in daily contact with Gordon, and their
comradeship had become so constant and so sweet that neither of
them dared face the problem of its meaning.

To the woman the man had become little less than her God. Their
daily life, its hopes, its poetry, its dreams of social and civic
salvation, were enough in themselves: she did not analyse or
question.

For the man, this fair woman, beautiful in face and form beyond the
flight of his fancy, and loyal in the worship of his strength, as
the soul of the strong man ever desires of his ideal woman, she had
become a daily inspiration. And yet he had not acknowledged this
even in a whisper of his soul.

In the meanwhile, his wife's interest in music had ceased, and she
was rarely seen at the church on Sundays or at its weekday functions.
She had withdrawn from its life and had settled into a state of
somber resentment.

She would frequently sit through a meal eating little, speaking in
monosyllables, her black eyes staring, wide open, and yet seeing
nothing, looking past the things that bound her, back into the
sunlit years of girlhood, or forward into the future whose shadow's
chill she felt already on her soul. Often he found her at night