But he had ceased to be touched by her reiterated longing for children; he was even a little bored by it.  And he was very much bored by her reproaches, her faint tempers and their following ardors of repentant love—­bitternesses, and cloying sweetnesses!  Yet, in spite of these things, the boarding-house marriage survived the lengthening of the fifty-four minutes of ecstasy into three years.  But it might not have survived its own third winter had it not been that Maurice’s unfaithfulness enforced his faithfulness.  For by spring that squabble about lead pencils, which had turned his careless steps toward the bridge, had turned his life so far from Eleanor’s that he had been untrue to her.

He had not meant to be untrue; nothing had been farther from his mind or purpose.  But there came a bitter Sunday afternoon in March ...

Eleanor, saying he did not “understand her,” cried about something—­afterward Maurice was not sure just what—­perhaps it was a question from one of the other boarders about the early ’eighties, and she felt herself insulted; “As if I could remember!” she told Maurice; but whatever it was, he had tried to comfort her by joking about it.  Then she had reproached him for his unkindness—­to most crying wives a joke is unkind.  Then she had said that he was tired of her!  At which he took refuge in silence—­and she cried out that he acknowledged it!

“You can’t deny it!  You’re tired of me because I’m older than you!”

And he said, between his teeth, “If you were old enough to have any sense, I wouldn’t be tired of you.”

She gave a cry; then stood, the back of her hand against her lips, her eyes wide with terror.

Maurice threw down a book he had been trying to read, got up, plunged into his overcoat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and, without a word, walked out of the room.  A moment later the front door banged behind him.  Eleanor, alone, stood perfectly still; she had said foolish things like that many times; she rather liked to say them!  But she had not believed them; now, her own words were a boomerang,—­they seemed to strike her in the face! He was tired of her. Instantly she was alert!  What must she do?  She sat down, tense with thought; first of all, she must be sweet to him; she mustn’t be cross; then she must try (Mrs. Newbolt had told her so!) to “entertain” him.  “I’ll read things, and talk to him the way Mrs. Davis does!” She must sew on his buttons, and scold poor old O’Brien....  With just this same silent determination she had hurried to act that night on the mountain!

But while she was sitting there in their cheerless room, planning and planning!—­Maurice was out, wandering about in the gray afternoon.  It had begun to snow, in a fitful, irritating way—­little gritty pellets that blew into his face.  He had nowhere to go—­four o’clock is a dead time to drop in on people!  He had nothing to do, and nothing to think of—­except the foolish,