the needles. Yes; Blair had had no cares, no responsibilities,--
and as for money! With a wave of resentment, she thought that she
would find out in the morning from her bookkeeper just how much
money she had given him since he was twenty-one. It was then that
a bleak consciousness, like the dull light of a winter dawn,
slowly began to take possession of her: _money_. She had
given him money; but what else had she given him? Not
companionship; she had never had the time for that; besides, he
would not have wanted it; she knew, inarticulately, that he and
she had never spoken the same language. Not sympathy in his
endless futilities; what intelligent person could sympathize with
a man who found serious occupation in buying--well, china
beetles? Or pictures! She glanced angrily over at that piece of
blackened canvas by the door, its gold frame glimmering faintly
in the firelight. He had spent five thousand dollars on a picture
that you could cover with your two hands! Yes; she had given him
money; but that was all she had given him. Money was apparently
the only thing they had in common.

Then came another surge of resentment,--that pitiful resentment
of the wounded heart; Blair had never cared how hard she worked
to make money for him! It occurred to her, perhaps for the first
time in her life, that she worked very hard; she said to herself
that sometimes she was tired. Yes, she had never thought of it
before, but she was sometimes very tired. But what did Blair care
for that? What did he care how hard she worked? Even as she said
it, with that anger which is a confession of something deeper
than anger, her mind retorted that if he had never cared how hard
she worked for their money, she had never cared how easily he
spent it. She had been irritated by his way of spending it, and