A Man's Hearth

by Eleanor M. Ingram

"Why? Where would you be?"

The baby was standing upright in its coach. The girl passed an arm about the tottering form to steady the fat little feet, and retorted on her questioner.

"Where? Home, of course, making ready for my man! If I lived there,"—with a gesture toward the tall, luxurious apartment houses on the Drive, behind them, "I would be choosing my prettiest frock and coiling my hair the way he liked best. If I lived there, across the river in one of those little houses, I would be making the house bright with lamps; wearing my whitest apron and making the supper hot—very hot, for there is frost in the air and he would be cold and tired and hungry. And I would have his chair ready and draw the curtains because he was inside and no one else mattered." She paused, drawing a deep breath. "That is where I would be," she concluded, as one patiently lessoning a dull pupil, and reseated the baby in its coach in obvious preparation for departure.

The man had stood quite still, dazed. But when she turned away, with a bend of her dark little head by way of farewell, he roused himself and overtook her in a stride.

"Thank you," he said, "I mean for letting me know anyone could feel like that. I suppose a great many people do, only I have not met that kind? No, never mind answering; how should you know? But, thank you. May I—if I see you again—may I speak to you?"

She surveyed him gravely, as if with clairvoyant ability to read a history from his face, a face open-browed and planned for strength, by its square outlines, but that somehow only succeeded in being pleasant and passively agreeable. It was the face of a man who never had been brought against conflict or any need for stern decision, whose true character was a sword never yet drawn from the sheath. And now, he was in trouble; so much lay plain to see. He was in bitter trouble and, she guessed, alone with the trouble.

He stood in mute acceptance of her scrutiny, recognizing her right, since he had asked so much. Before she spoke, he knew her answer, seeing it foreshadowed in the gray eyes.

"If you wish to very much. But—not too soon again."

She stepped from the curb, allowing no reply, but without apparent haste, pushing the carriage in which the baby chuckled and twisted to peep back at her. He watched her thread her way through the rushing lines of pleasure traffic; saw her reach the other side and disappear behind a knoll clothed with turf and evergreens that rose between them. The woman from whose presence he had come to this chance encounter once had told him that any human being looked absurd propelling a baby-coach. He recalled that statement now, and did not find it true. It was such a sane thing to do, so natural and good. At least, it seemed so when this girl did it. He envied the man, whoever he might be, who did, or would love her; envied him the clean simplicity she would make of life and the absence of hateful complications.

People were glancing curiously at his motionless figure; he aroused himself and walked on. He had chosen his own way of living, he angrily told himself; there was no excuse for whining if he did not like the place where free-will had led him. Yet—had he? Or had he, instead, been trapped? The doubt was ugly. He walked faster to escape it, but it ran at his heels like one of those sinister demon-animals of medieval legend.