“I won’t have you say anything against him,” she cried petuously.
“All right; keep your shirt in. I’m blowed if I know what you’ve got to stick up for him about. He don’t care much about you.”
She looked up with a quick drawing-in of the breath.
“How d’you know?”
“Think I can’t see?” He chuckled slily at his own acuteness. “I suppose you ’aven’t been crying to-day?”
“We had a little tiff this morning,” she answered. “Oh, don’t say he doesn’t care for me. I couldn’t live.”
“Go along with you,” he laughed. “Basil Kent ain’t the only pebble on the beach.”
Jenny went to the window and looked out. She saw her husband walk slowly along, his head bent down, betraying in his whole appearance the most profound depression, and thinking of their wretchedness, she could not restrain her tears. Everything went against them, and though loving him so tenderly, some mysterious power seemed ever to force her to anger him. With entire despair she turned to her brother and spoke words which had long been in her heart, but which till then she had not uttered to a living soul.
“Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, sometimes I don’t know which way to turn, I’m that unhappy. If the baby had only lived, I might have kept my husband—I might have made him love me.”
She sank on a chair and hid her face, but in a moment, hearing the door close, looked up.