After the Storm

"No, I thank you," replied Irene, curtly. "I don't incline to the

laughing mood, just now."

"Laughing is contagious," suggested Hartley.

"I shall not take the infection to-night." And she balanced her

little head with the perpendicularity of a plumb-line.

"Can't I persuade you?" He was in a real good-humor, and smiled as

he said this.

"No, sir. You may waive both argument and persuasion. I am in

earnest."

"And when a woman is in earnest you might as well essay to move the

Pillars of Hercules."

"You might as well in my case," answered Irene, without any

softening of tone or features.

"Then I shall not attempt, after a hard day's work, a task so

difficult. I am in a mood for rest and quiet," said the young

husband.

"Perhaps," he resumed, after a little pause, "you may feel somewhat

musical. There is to be a vocal and instrumental concert to-night.

What say you to going there? I think I could enjoy some good

singing, mightily."

Irene closed her lips firmly, and shook her head.

"Not musically inclined this evening?"

"No," she replied.

"Got a regular stay-at-home feeling?"

"Yes."

"Enough," said Hartley, with unshadowed good-humor, "we will stay at

home."

And he sung a snatch of the familiar song--"There's no place like

home," rising, as he did so, from the table, and offering Irene his

arm. She could do no less than accept the courtesy, and so they went

up to their cozy sitting-room arm-in-arm--he chatty, and she almost

silent.

"What's the matter, petty?" he asked, in a fond way, after trying

for some time, but in vain, to draw her out into pleasant

conversation. "Ain't you well to-night?"

Now, so far as her bodily state was concerned, Irene never felt

better in her life. So she could not plead indisposition.

"I feel well," she replied, glancing up into her husband's face in a

cold, embarrassed kind of way.

"Then your looks belie your condition--that's all. If it isn't the

body, it must be the mind. What's gone wrong, darling?"

The tenderness in Hartley's tones was genuine, and the heart of

Irene leaped to his voice with a responsive throe. But was he not

her master and tyrant? How that thought chilled the sweet impulse!

"Nothing wrong," she answered, with a sadness of tone which she was

unable to conceal. "But I feel dull, and cannot help it."

"You should have gone with me to laugh with Matthews. He would have

shaken all these cobwebs from your brain. Come! it is not yet too

late."

But the rebel spirit was in her heart; and to have acceded to he

husband's wishes would have been to submit herself to control.

"You must excuse me," she replied. "I feel as if home were the

better place for me to-night."