effect—bonds of gratitude, bonds of affection, bonds of eternal assurance. Both were highly emotional, close to laughter and to tears.
"You—you saved the works for me!" blurted George with shining eyes.
"You—you kept the home open for me," she countered, and kissed him with impulsive tenderness. Then a mood of self-reproach overtook her. "Oh, I was hard, hard, when I went away," she said. "It took a long time to break me, but at last I am broken, George, broken by a world and its woe, and made whole again by the gospel of work and service."
"It was all my fault, though," insisted the husband with a manner that demanded generously the right to monopolize all self-reproaches for himself. "I am just a plain hell-paver!"
"A hell-paver?" Fay looked at him wonderingly.
"Yes," said George, and expounded to her Doctor Mellus's definition of the word with some of his own connotations added. "That's all I've been, just a plain hell-paver," he concluded remorsefully.
But a soft, appealing hand was laid upon his arm, and Fay's face, full of a look of deep contrition was brought near to his. "I've been a hell-paver, too," she said humbly. "I meant well, but I didn't do well. I was just a silly, wilful, spoiled child of luxury. Environment
