Her barrenness, or his, had been the bitterest thing she found in life. Duffey met her at the table where he boarded for a time, in Camden; the small-pox came long before he did, but still Eva was earnestly hopeful of marriage. It was years before she realized that no one else would ever have asked her. When nature did not assert itself in the ordinary conception which came all too easily for most women, Eva worked to strengthen their planting. Covertly she resorted to old wives’ remedies, queer recipes written on scraps of yellow paper, superstitions and shibboleths whose inadequacy she knew well enough. The doctor laughed at her for awhile; after they had been five years married he never mentioned the subject of their having a child. His wife escaped the shrewdom or the maudlin mother-soulfulness which would have claimed many another. Her maternal instinct seemed dried into a staunch pith all through the heart of her; her words were sharp, her thought even keener; she believed Adam Duffey a great man, and possibly she was the most deeply contented woman in a civilization where ordinary contentment was a matter of Gospels, jet earrings, rich cooking and immense cow-barns.