"I like being my own boss," she said. "I've done a lot o' figuring, Jim, these last three years, and it's kind o' broadened me, I hope. I can't go back where I was. I'm a better woman than I was before, and I hope and believe that I'm better able to be a real mother to my children."
Jim looked up at the moon filling the warm, moist air with a transfiguring light that fell in a luminous mist on the distant hills. "I know one thing, Nellie; I'm a better man than I was before, and it's all owin' to you."
His voice trembled a little, and the sympathetic tears came into her eyes. She didn't speak at once—she couldn't. At last she stopped him by a touch on the arm.
"Jim, I want a partner in my store. Let us begin again, right here. I can't say that I'll ever feel just as I did once—I don't know as it's right to. I looked up to you too much. I expected too much of you, too. Let's begin again, as equal partners." She held out her hand, as one man to another. He took it wonderingly.
"All right, Nell; I'll do it."
Then, as he put his arm around her, she held up her lips to be kissed. "And we'll be happy again—happy as we deserve, I s'pose," she said, with a smile and a sigh.
"It's almost like getting married again, Nell—for me."
As they walked off up the sidewalk in the soft moonlight, their arms were interlocked.
They loitered like a couple of lovers.
The End.