LITMIR.BIZ

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true of the elder Malls, was true today of Nellie and her husband. A man and a woman needed each other’s help, could make a more successful fight, go farther together than either could alone. To Martin that was the whole matter in a nutshell, and Rose’s gentle question threw him into momentary confusion.

      “I don’t know,” he answered uneasily. “We both like to make a success of things and we’d have plenty to do with. We’d make a pretty good pulling team.” Rose considered this thoughtfully. “Perhaps the people who work together best are the happiest. But somehow I’d never pictured myself on a farm.”

      “Of course, I don’t expect you to make up your mind right away,” Martin conceded. “It’s something to study over. I’ll come around to your place tomorrow evening after I get the chores done up and we can talk some more.”

      So far as Martin was concerned, the matter was clinched. He felt not the slightest doubt but that it was merely a question of time before Rose would consent to his proposition.

      After he had left, she reviewed it a little sadly. It wasn’t the kind of marriage of which she had always dreamed. She realized that she was capable of profound devotion, of responding with her whole being to a deep love. But was it probable that this love would ever come? She thought over the men of Fallon and its neighborhood. There were few as handsome as Martin—not one with such generous plans. She knew her own domestic talents. She was a born housekeeper and home-maker. It had been a curious destiny that had driven her into a newspaper office, and at that very moment, there lay on her desk, like a whisper from Fate, the written offer from the rival paper to buy her out for fifteen hundred dollars, giving herself a position on the consolidated staff. She had been pondering over this proposal when Martin interrupted her.

      It wasn’t as if she were younger or likely to start somewhere else. She would live out her life in Fallon, that she knew. There was little chance of her meeting new men, and those established enough to make marriage with them desirable were already married. Candidly, she admitted that if she turned Martin Wade down now, she might never have another such opportunity. If only she could feel that he cared for her—loved her. But wasn’t the fact that he was asking her to be his wife proof of that? It was very strange. She had never suspected that Martin had ever felt drawn to her. With a sigh she pressed her large, capable hands to her heart. Its deep piercing ache brought tears to her eyes. She felt, bitterly, that she was being cheated of too much that was sweet and precious—it was all wrong—she would be making a mistake. For a moment, she was overwhelmed. Then the practical common sense that had been instilled into her from her earliest consciousness, even as it had been instilled into Martin, reasserted itself. After all, perhaps he was right—the busy people were the happy people. Many couples who began marriage madly in love ended in the divorce courts. Martin was kind and it would be wonderful to have the home he had described. She imagined herself mistress of it, thrilled with the warm hospitality she would radiate, entertained already at missionary meetings and at club. At least, she would be less lonely. It would be a fuller life than now. What was she getting, really getting, alone, out of this world? She and Martin would be good partners. Poor boy! What a long, hard, cheerless existence he had led. Tenderness welled in her heart and stilled its pain. Perhaps his emotions were far deeper than he could express in words. His way was to plan for her comfort. Wasn’t there something big about his simple cards-on-the-table wooing? And he had called her his rose, his Rose of Sharon. The new house was to be the garden in which she should blossom. To be sure, he had said it all awkwardly, but Rose, who was devout, knew the stately Song of Solomon and as she recalled the magnificent outburst of passion she almost let herself be convinced that Martin was a poet-lover in the rough.

      And all the while, giving pattern to her flying thoughts, the contents of a letter, received the day before, echoed through her mind. Her sister, Norah, the youngest of the family, had told of her first baby. “We have named her for you, darling,” she wrote. “Oh, Rose, she has brought me such deep happiness. I wonder if this ecstasy can last. Her little hand against my breast—it is so warm and soft—like a flower’s curling petal, as delicate and as beautiful as a butterfly’s wing. I never knew until now what life really meant.” As Rose reread the throbbing lines and pictured the eager-eyed young mother, her own sweet face glowed with reflected joy and with the knowledge that this ecstasy, this deeper understanding could come to her, too—Martin, he was vigorous, so worthy of being the father of her children. He would love them, of course, and provide for them better than any other man she knew. Had not Norah married a plain farmer who was only a tenant? The new little Rose’s father was not to be compared to Martin, and yet he had brought the supreme experience to her sister. So Rose sat dreaming, the arid level of monotonous days which, one short hour ago, had stretched before her, flowering into fragrant, sun-filled fields.

      Meanwhile, Martin congratulated himself upon having found a woman as sensible, industrious and free from foolish notions, as even he could wish.

      Chapter III

      Dust In Her Heart

      Six weeks later Martin and Rose were married. Martin had let the contract for the new house and barn to Silas Fletcher, Fallon’s leading carpenter, who had the science of construction reduced to utter simplicity. He had listened to Martin’s description of what he wished and, after some rough figuring, had proceeded to draw the plans on the back of a large envelope. Both Rose and Martin knew that those rude lines would serve unfailingly. For three thousand dollars Fletcher would build the very house Martin had pictured to Rose: a two-story one with four nice rooms and a bath upstairs, four rooms and a pantry downstairs, a floored garret, concrete cellar, an inviting fireplace and wide porches. For two thousand dollars he would give a substantial barn capable of holding a hundred tons of hay and of accommodating twenty cows and four horses.

      Rose had been deeply touched by the thoroughness of Martin’s plans, by his unfailing consideration for her comfort. True, there had been moments when her warm, loving nature had been chilled. At such times, misgivings had clamored and she had, finally, all but made up her mind to tell him that she could not go on—that it had all been a mistake. She would say to him, she had decided: “Martin, you are one of the kindest and best men, and I could be happy with you if only you loved me, but you don’t really care for me and you never will. I feel it. Oh, I do! and I could not bear it—to live with you day in and day out and know that.”

      But she had reckoned without her own goodness of heart. On the very evening on which she had quite determined to tell Martin this decision he also had arrived at one. As soon as he had entered Rose’s little parlor he had exclaimed with an enthusiasm unusual with him: “We broke the ground for your new garden, today, Rose of Sharon, and Fletcher wants to see you. There are some more little things you’ll have to talk over with him. He understands that you’re the one I want suited.”

      Rose had felt suddenly reassured. Why, she had asked herself contritely, couldn’t she let Martin express his love in his own way? Why was she always trying to measure his feelings for her by set standards?

      “I’ve been wondering,” he had gone on quickly, “what you would think of putting up with my old shack while the new house is being built? It wouldn’t be as if you were going to live there for long and you’d be right on hand to direct things.”

      “Why, I could do that, of course,” she had answered pleasantly. “If you’ve lived there all these years, I surely ought to be able to live there a few months, but Martin—”

      “I know what you’re going to say,” he had interrupted hastily. “You think we ought to wait a while longer, but if we’re going to pull together for the rest of our lives why mightn’t we just as well begin now? Why is one time any better than another?”

      There had been a wistfulness, so rarely in Martin’s voice, that Rose had detected it instantly. After all, why should she keep him waiting when he needed her so much, she had thought tenderly, all the sweet womanliness in her astir with yearnings to lift the cloud of loneliness from his life.

      Rose had always believed love a breath of beauty that would hold its purity even in a hovel, but she had not been prepared for the sordidness that seemed to envelop her as she crossed the threshold of the first home of her married life. Martin, held in

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