should not want, first of all, to please her and she should not live to gratify him.
He thought how different she was, not only from his mother, but from Alice. On the beach, a few minutes ago, he had told Fidelia for the first time of the ten thousand dollars he had borrowed from Mr. Fuller and she had completely ignored it; what she had talked about, the next moment after, was sending his mother some food. How tremendously serious a matter that debt had been to Alice! How she had debated it with him and had entered into the responsibility of it! He thought of her as having felt it almost as much as he, himself.
He drove from him, by deliberate effort, his images of his close companionship with Alice; but, in going, they stirred in him connected thoughts. He gazed at his wife and wondered who was he who had been to her what Alice had been to himself? Who was the man who had been her companion on the occasion when she had to beat wind and water to live and who had been in the party about the campfire where Fidelia had shared "the best supper ever," although it was burnt black in places.
David thought, as he looked at his lovely wife: "You meant you cared for him." David knew that the man was dead; for Fidelia had told him so during the night they drifted on the ice off Alice's home; but since then, she had never mentioned him and David had found no good opportunity to ask more.
This was not the time to ask, when he would put his question out of nothing more than his own thoughts. How little he knew about this beautiful,
