Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby

"You and I have been married nearly seven years," Margaret Kirby reflected bitterly, "and I suppose we are as near hating each other as two civilized people ever were!"

She did not say it aloud. The Kirbys had long ago given up any discussion of their attitude to each other. But as the thought came into her mind she eyed her husband—lounging moodily in her motor-car, as they swept home through the winter twilight—with hopeless, mutinous irritation.

What was the matter, she wondered, with John and Margaret Kirby—young, handsome, rich, and popular? What had been wrong with their marriage, that brilliantly heralded and widely advertised event? Whose fault was it that they two could not seem to understand each other, could not seem to live out their lives together in honorable and dignified companionship?

"Perhaps everyone's marriage is more or less like ours," Margaret mused miserably. "Perhaps there's no such thing as a happy marriage."

Almost all the women that she knew admitted unhappiness of one sort or another. Margaret had never sunk to that; it would not even have been a relief to a nature as self-sufficient and as cold as hers. But for years she had felt that her marriage tie was an irksome bond.

A certain audacious newspaper had boldly hinted that there would soon be a sensational separation in the Kirby household. Margaret had laughed when the article was shown her—but the arrow had reached her very soul.

So it had come to that. They had drifted, as so many do, from companionship to quarrels, to truces, and finally to a cold adjustment that left their lives separate.

Yet she had done only what all the women she knew had done. She had spent, entertained, and lived in effortless luxury. Wasn't that what marriage should be?

"Thank Heaven, there isn't a child to complicate things!" she thought.

At a crossing, she noticed a young couple laughing over trivial plans. Something tightened painfully in her chest.

"Fifty-cent dinner!" she murmured. "It must be awful!"

To her surprise, her husband followed her into her room.

"Sit down a minute, Margaret," he said. "I want to speak to you."

He spoke quickly, almost harshly:

"It's come to this—the whole thing goes to the creditors tomorrow. It's the end!"

Margaret stared at him, white with fury.

"Do you mean my money is gone?"

"I tried to warn you," he said quietly.

He spoke of arrangements, of her future security, of practical matters. She heard none of it clearly.

"I suppose this can be kept from the papers?" she asked.

"That's impossible," he said.

He left her. She remembered afterward the look in his eyes.

Then came the cry in the hall.

Moments later, she held his limp body in her arms.

They told her he had taken poison.

They told her he was dying.

But he lived.

Weeks and months passed in a slow return to life. On Christmas Day, he whispered her name.

She was there always—quiet, constant, patient.

When he was stronger, he went out one day alone and found her not in luxury, but working in a modest boarding-house.

She had sold everything to help his firm.

She had built something new.

When she returned and saw him waiting, she dropped everything and ran to him.

"Margaret!" he whispered. "What have you done?"

She answered only by holding him close.

Months passed. He took a modest position. She worked steadily.

Their lives were hard, simple, and honest.

Years later, they stood together before a quiet country house.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

Her eyes filled.

"Why," she said softly, "it's home."

They disappeared from their old world.

People spoke of her as lost, tragic, forgotten.

But one day, old acquaintances saw them again—laughing, surrounded by children, alive in a way they had never been before.

And for once, no one said, "Poor, dear Margaret Kirby."