There was another silence while she endeavored to make headway in the thick mess with her little sips, but abandoning it in despair she laid down her spoon and looked at him. He ate stolidly through his bowlful, as if to reprove her excessive daintiness. The expected remark came as he scraped the bottom.

"You must have a bad time with the food in a place like this."

"It is not Martin's this inn," she replied serenely. "However, one lives on eggs."

It was a brave little note. She was leaning on the table, with her fingers arched. The rings were unfamiliar. He missed the two that he had given her, even the plain gold band, the symbol of their twelve years' misadventure. She noticed his gaze, and smiled — but did not change the position of her hands. It was as though she wished him to realize that she had done her best to obliterate her woman's share in their common bondage. They had not divorced, because of the children for all the reasons. But that she had divorced him in heart and soul, so far as she could, that was what she meant by going about the earth without her papers, so to speak, though married. That was always Eleanor's way, to publish her defiance

of some convention with needless emphasis, getting satisfaction from spurning a mere symbol.

They were struggling with the tough chicken when she remarked politely,

"There's not much to see in this place, -only a heap of brown stone at the other end of the island. I can't see why they make such a fuss over that temple it's mostly on the ground!"

"A fragment of the pediment still in place is said to be of the best period," he replied pedantically.

"Oh, there are two or three columns still up and a few blocks on top. But the view is lovely, and it's the dearest, dirtiest little hole of a town I love it!" He smiled at her familiar descriptive "I meant to leave by to-day's

manner.

He reddened at the neatly delivered blow. His second remark was hardly more fortunate, but it had been on his mind all through the meal.

"Where's Molly? why is n't she with you ?"

She answered him squarely, with no attempt at equivocation:

"She did n't want to come over — preferred to spend the summer with the Claytons on the Maine coast. You see she's eighteen this summer, and there are gayer things for a pretty girl of eighteen than knocking about Europe with an old woman of a mother!" Then she added lightly, "The Claytons, you know, have a very charming home."

It was the second stab so far!

"And Ned," she continued, now that he had brought the children in, “I had a letter from him last week. He's camping in some wild place north."

"Yes, Saguenay seems to be enjoying himself with his friends. He really worked at college this year. The trip will do him good."

"I hope so."

café at Stromboli. Won't you come up and smoke your cigar? It's quite proper!" she added demurely.

As he followed her up the flight of dirty stone steps, he felt that he had made a mistake in accepting her invitation, had compromised their position. But it was too late. The salone was only another cheerless cell of a room, like his across the hall. The bed had been removed, however, and there was a fireplace on which a bundle of fagots burned. There was also a fantastic and ancient lounge drawn before the fire, and on the table near-by some yellow backs besides the guide-books, photographs, writing materials, and other odds and ends that make a forlorn simulacrum of home for the wanderer. In the further corner was a desultory medley of wraps and purchases -no maid could keep Eleanor wholly "picked up!"

Marshall, glancing about, wondered vaguely at the energy involved in making over this room, just for a few days' stay. On the floor beside the fagot fire knelt the maid, holding a tiny copper pot over the flame. He might have guessed that it would never be the inn coffee for Eleanor, luxurious puss!

When the maid rose with the steaming potkin, her mistress said, "Another cup for monsieur, Annette!" and added in English, — “You will have to be just Monsieur Alfred-I can't bother to resurrect a husband for her after I have so decently buried him!" She laughed boyishly, and he reddened. "You've saved the poor girl's life- she will be crazy with excitement. She finds my loverless existence altogether inexplicable and triste. I shall have to tell her that I just met you- by accident."

He sipped his coffee, which did not come from Stromboli, and he realized that Eleanor had given him her customary second cup. But she was always generous.

"I'd have had cream, if I had expected the honor."

"Thanks. I have given up cream."

"Still bothered with your digestion ?" "Yes."

He was looking at the books on the table. With an exclamation of surprise he picked up Paillot's Sur les Monuments Grecs, etc. The thick volume was turned down well into the middle.

"It's rather heavy stuff, don't you think?" and he did not altogether suppress his irony.

"For me? I'm much interested in it," his wife replied. "I've been cultivating my mind. It's about all that's left for a woman like me to cultivate, you see.”

At the sombre note he felt curiously a reproach originating somewhere far down in his consciousness. He did not reply, but continued to turn over the books, -a new French novel on the eternal French theme, a play or two, some English novels more what he would have called "her line." Then he came back to the fire while she curled herself up in the corner of the lengthy lounge, holding her cup of coffee in sensuous reserve. She pointed to some photographs, one of the temple, and near it lay a pencil sketch of the same pièce de résistance of Stromboli.

"You did that?"

"It's mine," she chirped, "and also the others, beyond."

They were glimpses of the alley life up and down the steep stone stairways of the old Siculi-Italiot-Greek town. He laid them down without comment. To any other woman he would have vouchsafed a word of compliment, if they had been much worse. But he could not phrase it for her. She seemed to understand and smilingly drew his attention to her purchases.

"See those chairs and this old sofa, and the chest of drawers - I'm going to send them home-back, I mean!" (It was so like her to pack up these impossible moth-eaten scraps of furniture and cart them back at immense expense - to repose in a storage warehouse!) "And there's some linen and truck in the upper drawers."

He winced. There had been something of the same vague purpose in the background of his mind latterly.

It seemed as though they had come to an impasse, conversationally. He looked at his half-consumed cigar and debated flight. It was not gay, this skating over all the thin ice that stretched between one and the wife one had avoided for ten years. There were old friends to be asked about, but he refrained. They had divided the camp when the break came, and he had no real curiosity about the other side of the camp. And his wife, having finished her coffee, seemed depressed, too, could not maintain that light comedy note which she had struck so bravely at first.

"There's Ned's letter over there," she remarked, pointing to the table. "Nice boy! Our children seem to get along, to be fairly happy without us!" "Well, that usually is the case with children, is n't it?"

There were times when he also reflected that giving his son a liberal allowance at school and college and writing him regularly each week, with an occasional vacation spree, was not completely fulfilling the rôle of parent. Conceivably both the children might criticise them for their failure in spite of the fact that they had "stuck it out" for twelve years, "for the sake of the children," and then merely "separated" instead of availing themselves of the liberal divorce arrangements prevailing in their country.

"There are a good many like us!" he ventured.

"There are. But it's not good for a girl, especially when she begins to think of love and marriage and all that

II

When Marshall descended the long flight of steps to the quay, the next morning, the rain was no longer falling; but squally wreaths of cloud scudded overhead and what should have been the blue Eolian sea was a mass of dirty gray and foaming white. There was no steamer at the quay, no smoke patch on the horizon. "She'll not venture out a day like this!" the interested and completely idle citizens of Stromboli vociferated again and again. "There'll be no vapore until the Virgin sends calm seas!" Then Marshall, with the persistent resourcefulness of his race in providing extra means for meeting transportation emergencies, demanded a boat. There was stupefaction, and after repeating his idea in all sorts of Italian he was forced to admit that there existed no means of escaping from Stromboli that day.

As he turned back through the stony lane, he saw two women descending in hot haste, Eleanor and the maid staggering under a load of wraps.

"It has n't gone?" his wife demanded without the formality of greeting. "It has n't come to-day!"

and won't come

"And there's no other way," she pouted. "That is the trouble with islands."

"No other way—not until the Virgin calms the waters," he said, repeating unconsciously the picturesque phrase of the citizens of Stromboli.

In spite of the faint rose that exercise in the damp sea air had brought to her face, there were dark circles under the eyes and a look of anxiety. Apparently she had not slept any better than he, and had concluded, on the tossing pillow, as he had, that the situation was impossible, ridiculous- must be evaded. But seeing her look of dismay reflected in his lugubrious face she burst into a hysterical fit of laughter, and finally seated herself on the edge of a step.

"I'm - afraid we're in for it!" she gurgled. "We can't escape unless

you will swim ashore, or take quarters in the temple."

Her gayety cheered him only moderately. He would have followed her last suggestion incontinently; but one could hardly abandon even one's separated wife in an island village, without something of an excuse. While he was preparing one, she rose, in gay spirits.

"Come! I'll show you the place. You see I am installed here - almost chez moi !"

So they turned up the main alley, Eleanor pointing out to him the dark hole that served as café according to the sign. "See what I saved you from last evening!" Once or twice she darted into a noisome court where incredibly squalid old women pulled and jostled in their eagerness to dispose of certain heirlooms to the mad strangers. Once she came back from her foray to ask change for a banknote, and was very scrupulous about making change to the centime, searching her little net purse for a five-cent piece. Then they climbed a rocky path that skirted the gulf, far above the sea, leading to the temple. A streak of sunlight shot downwards through the leaden cloud masses, illuming for the moment the dull brown stones of the ruin, warming the broken pillars, the fragment still intact in melancholy isolation on the island promontory.

"Oh-h!" she exclaimed. "How lovely, and just for us! Come!"

She hurried the pace, and Marshall puffed heavily behind.

"You're pretty brisk," he remarked, remembering that in the old days she had never stirred without a cab.

"I take a good deal of exercise that's another occupation for age besides cultivating one's mind," she replied amicably, waiting for him to join her.

"So my counsels have borne fruit late," he could not refrain from saying.

Eleanor, excited by the sun-bathed shrine, did not answer. As they gained the scaly hilltop before the east front,

the clouds drew together, leaving the spot in chill gloom.

"An ill omen perhaps the goddess does not consider us fit persons to enter her sanctuary. Do you suppose she'll get Zeus to drop a thunderbolt on your head ?"

Marshall smiled grimly at the daring joke in which he detected a jibe at former gallantries with those "other women." It was gentle enough, however, to be ignored.

"Come on- let's venture in, any way!" she continued in the spirit of mischievous raillery. "Juno must have been a forgiving lady-with that husband."

They plunged into the rank growth of grass about the temple steps, pausing to examine the fragment of the architrave still mouldering on the severe Doric pillars, and the one solitary pillar beyond, to which a thick green vine clung, swaying slightly in the wind. This was the bit, this isolated, broken pillar with the green vine, that she had sketched.

"It's fine, that!" she exclaimed, opening her arms in instinctive enthusiasm for its noble grace, "and the rest are broken fragments!"

As she stepped forward into the weedgrown inclosure, the fitful sun darted again from the heavens.

"See! She approves still."

They poked about for a time among the prostrate members of the little temple, and she snapped with her camera a few details that he pointed out. Then they came out on the west side overlooking the gusty sea and sat down. Before another one of those uncomfortable conversational gaps she interposed blithely,

"I suppose this was where women came to pray for happy marriages, was n't it?"

He nodded.

"And now poor Juno's temple is without honor, here as well as in America!" "The gods change: here they pray to the Virgin instead."

"Oh! I see."

His thought went back to those new

occupations, which presented such interesting developments of character.

"So you find time now to read and sketch, as well as to take exercise?" "Yes - I'm getting dull even to myself. You see, when age comes," she mused on, "when you've finished with all your own agitating possibilities, you 've simply got to look out of yourself into life other people's lives, —” she waved her hand to the wide space of the sea, "and try to see what's there

- apart from yourself."

"Quite so," he agreed grimly. "It's a pity one could n't take that objective attitude earlier in life!"

She corrected him tranquilly.

"Without having the emotional one first, what would the other be worth?”

So they talked on, enjoying the calm and the flickering sunlight. There was something subtly humorous to them both in the idea of sitting there beneath the shadow of the temple of Juno exchanging philosophical reflections on life. It had been so many years, even before the outward rupture, when they had exchanged nothing beyond business details and dry conventionalities. Finally she rose, saying, "It must be past noon and that luncheon will be colder than these stones!" and they retraced their way, shepherded by a swarm of Stromboli youth.

The shambling padrona placed a fat bottle of Asti on the table. "Her votive offering to the goddess," he dared to suggest. What with the wine and their fresh zest after the morning on the windy promontory, they had a gay little meal.

"It has n't been so bad?" she demanded teasingly, on leaving him for her nap. "At any rate we've got through the morning and you've seen the temple of Juno, that celebrated ruin!"

III

"No, it has n't come to so much," he admitted, lighting his second cigar that evening. His wife was lying on