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Show ZOE BECKLEY'S INTERESTING STCRY I WHEN A MAN'S DESPONDENT. "This is bitter-sweet comfort you're offering-me, Cora," David Temple said with a rueful smile. "Your very offer to help me as stenographer drives home to me all the harder how little I have to offer you as my wife. Here vou are, the dearest, gamest little woman wo-man a man was ever blessed with for a wife. Fine, sensitive, sensible a woman whom a Croesus would be ' proud to shower gold on, show off be fore the world in a setting worthy of the best women in the world. And what do I do for you? After giving vou a taste of something approaching your deserts at Colony Park I drag you back to this." 1 With a deprecating hand he took in their little new apartment where they were commencing their uphill fight again. Cora tried to interrupt with the consoling words and thoughts which rushed to her lips. But David put his hand over them. "Now that you've started me, dear, you must let me. got my wall out of my system," he smiled. Then his face darkened In disgust at himself. "No, I won't!" he snapped. "You're a game little woman and you bear your bur' den, mostly of my placing, with a grip, and I, I go moaning over mine like a moonslck calf. I am ashamed I Let's talf of something else, Chick." I Cora shook her head. "There's no question of pride between be-tween thee and me In such things, David " she said tenderly. "If you won't talk the'thlngs that bother you to me, you'y. brood over them yourself. your-self. Which will be much worse for your Innards, dear. Also, you and I are one in the best sense, honey, so you're only keeping your troubles to yourself when you tell me about them. And my part of our head may knock the ground from under some of the tombstones which seem to clutter your view just now. So talk, dearest." David's face brightened He was about to say something as a tribute to her, but did not, andb putting his arm about her, he let the action Bpeak the more personal message, But the relief re-lief to him of being able to unburden his worries on his wife and yet.be absolved ab-solved by her of the suspicion of weakness weak-ness helped to lighten his depression. "What sends a man down In the dumps most ot all, dear, is to fall down on the Job of moving his wife to Easy street Hero I am nearly - - thirty; and here you are headed not for but away frqm Easy street. "Then I think hack to the men who started with me and the men who ran abreast of me. fi'here are mighty few of them who aren't farther up the road to comfort and success than I. I realize, of course, that it hasn't been my fault or inefficiency entirely. But when a man's down for a time, no matter how the brick came to be where he tripped, he's inclined to lay the blame to himself and gloom over "You Joked about tombstones cluttering clut-tering my landscapes. Well, dear, I can almost see them. Each of them is the tombstone of a decade In my life from now on. 'Here has passed away David Temple's thirtieth year.' And nothing much good to say about it. The sanfts about the fortieth and the fiftieth only worse. In all sincerity, sin-cerity, dear. I see nothing but strug gle and not much else ahead. And It's not the vision to inspire one who has fallen to the foot of the hill and has got to gird his loins for the up climb again. "You've brought this funeral oration on yourself, Cora, dear, bv Insisting on your oneness with me. "Now these are the things I tell myself. These are the mountains that loom up before a man who's down below and make the going seem heavy. If you know any crosscuts or roundabouts.teach me them, little comrade, and then I'll give the lie tb the man who wrote: " 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.' " |