The Irish standard., 1914-01-10
HIS WOMANLY Wife
BY ELIZABETH SEARS.

Dorothy Marshall sank back in the
big, cushioned, bamboo chair before
her driftwood fire with sigh of con-
tent. She held a package of business
papers in her hands. Dorothy always
dreaded business details. 1t would be
real relief when Thurston should
take it all off her hands. Meantime
the fire snapped and the embers
glowed seductively.
She was tired. Positively worn out.
Thurston had upset her SO that after.
noon. He had been SO impetuous and
she was not used to scenes. She
dropped the papers in her lap and
!clasped her hands behind her head.
She loved the fragrant smell of burn
ing wood. She loved to watch the
dancing, brilliant flames that nothing
but driftwood could produce.
She held out her dainty toes to the
heat and lazily congratulated herself.
as she admired them, that she had
never adopted the mannish styles
either Of dress or of manners that so
many women did. Tom had never ap
proved Of 1t.
Her clinging black dress hung in es-
sentially feminine and well-built lines
as she sat there; but it was not at all
becoming. She did not look we'll in
black, yet she had worn it faithfully,
even devotedly, ever since Toms
death.
Her mother had spoken her mind
plainly about it.
"You look like a fright in black" :"
she had said, with the brutal frank
ness which is permissible to rela-
tives. "Tom himself would not wish
1t If he knew how unbecoming it was. :"
was"
Thurston had said almost the same
thing that afternoon when he had
asked her to marry him in a month
and go with him to Japan.
"Tom himself would wish you to
be happy" he had urged. She loved
Thurston with every fiber of her be-
ing, but he was a man and could not
understand her feelings about 1t.
Tom would wish her to be happy.
That was just it. If he had been
brute or anything Of that sort, it
would be different. He had been
more than good to her. always. She
remembered, with a choke in her
throat, all his affectionate little
ways.
Thurston was not always quite
reasonable. He had shown more than
a trace of a horrid temper. He had
been unnecessarily severe when he
had denounced her reasons for delay
as absurd, quixotic unreasonable.
Surely it was not unreasonable to
wish to show proper respect to ones
husband.
Thurston, too, had reminded her
of the fact that she had been a
widow more than year; that she had
mourned her husband faithfully and
with sincere grief.
She felt thrill of conscious virtue
at the thought. Not many women
would have worn black SO constantly
and so long when it was SO unbecom-
ing. She had really been very fond of
Tom. Not, of course, as she loved
Thurston; no one could expect it. They
were so different. She could not help
but love Tom. He had been so good
to her. He had loved her so COM
pletely.
II had his every thought" she muir
INJURED. She remembered the day he
had brought her home the very chair
she sat in, especially for her comfort.
And even when he had gone to Japan
that time he had been so worried
about leaving her. She had wanted
ito go. She had always longed to see
Japan, but Tom had been so tied down
with that tiresome business he had
thought the trip might not be pleasant
for her. But he had promised to go
again just to take her, the dear boy.
The Grantleys had gone in the same
steamer. Mrs. Grantley had told her
how worried and busy poor Tom had
been. If she had known the Grantleys
were going at that time she would
have gone too. She would have en-
joyed the trip with them even if Tom
had been too busy and occupied to
take her about. Dear Tom. He had
never encouraged her intimacy with
Helen Grantley. She was not his style
of woman, though she was undeniably
handsome and brilliant in a Cleopatra
sort of way. She was so popular with
most men. But Tom could never bear
any woman who made herself notice
able in any way.
"No woman ever suited him SO we'll
as his brown-eyed, womanly wife" !"
How often he had said that. Tom had
never dropped his loving ways. True,
they had been married but two years,
but she had known men who had been
positively coarse to their wives in far
less time than that.
1t was so odd that Thurston would
not understand the way she felt. It
would be so mean, so disloyal to
poor Tom to forget him SO soon. No
not to forget him, exactly; she