I  
What is written is written. Grace moved to Graystone Hall and Halsey remained at the factory cottage; nor did the separation, which was regarded by both as merely temporary after all, afflict either to the extent that both had supposed it would. Grace now became acting mistress of a large and elaborate ménage. As to her husband, his domestic affairs fell into the hands of Mrs. Ann Sullivan, wife of Jim Sullivan, Halsey's most trusted foreman in the factory.
 
Mrs. Sullivan, blessed with six children of her own, alleged that it would be no trouble whatever to her to take on the sweeping, mending, and all else for an additional household, and to furnish meals for the solitary head thereof; and such was her ability to make proof of all these statements that she in part was to blame for the sad truth that Halsey was not as unhappy as he ought to have been.
 
The chief reason for Halsey's easy readjustment, however, lay somewhere in his comparison of the Halsey blood with blood half Rawn. Grace had been cold, after all. She had openly been discontented, and especially unhappy since the birth of the deformed child. She had left him and gone to her father with no great protest; nor did she, at the occasions of their rare and lessening visits, display more than lukewarm interest in her husband and her former home. Within six months she was beginning to blossom out in raiment, in demeanor. She spoke of things not in his knowledge though in hers. She was changing. She was going up in the world. He, for the time at least, was doing no better than to stand still; as the factory now was doing, and International Power, also—marking time, waiting for something.
 
 
 
 
II
 
Ann Sullivan was not a bad philosopher, besides being a good cook, and at times she did not hesitate to engage Mr. Halsey in conversation when they met at this or that time of the day; as when by chance, one noontide when he came home for lunch, he found her sweeping down the front stair.
 
"You're lookin' lonesome to-day, Mr. Halsey," she remarked without much preliminary. "You're fair grievin' for your wife, I suppose? But why should you expict anny woman to stay here whin she has such a Pa, with such a house as her Pa has?"
 
"Would you have gone over there, Mrs. Sullivan?" asked Halsey, stopping and feeling in his pocket for a pipe of tobacco. It was a question they often had discussed.
 
"Would I? In a minnit! I'd lave Jim Sullivan for iver if I'd one chanct such as your wife had."
 
She grinned, but her look belied her speech.
 
"What I'm wantin', Mr. Halsey," she went on, "is what anny woman wants. I want a di'mond star to wear on me head whin I'm sweeping flures. I need di'mond earrings and bracelets to wear whin I'm makin' your beds, you mind; and a silk dress that hollers 'I'm a-comin'!' whin I start out to scrub the steps. Ain't it the truth, Mr. Halsey? Ain't that what ivery woman in the wurrld, at laste in America, is wantin'?"
 
"Sure," nodded Halsey. "Don't forget the automobile while you're wishing."
 
"True it is! Whut woman of anny social position has not got her awtomobeel to-day? Luk at me. If I had me rights, I'd have me electric bro'om brought to the coorb ivery mornin' for me to go to market; and ivery evenin', after I'd got me sweepin' done, I'd have me long gray torpedy corm around to take me and Jim out fer a fast spin up the bullyvard. Me with di'monds on my hair, with rings on me fingers an' bells on me toes, a-settin' there an' lukkin' scornful. Oh, I was born in Ireland, but I'm American now. The day Jim Sullivan gives me what is me due, and I git me first awtomobeel, 'twill be the proud day fer me—the day whin I'm first fined fer vi'latin' the speed law of the city. 'Tis a great counthry this!"
 
 
 
 
III
 
Mrs. Sullivan grinned happily at her romancing; but presently set her broom against the door-jamb and turned to speak more in her real mind.
 
"Anny woman wants to blackguard a little once in a while, Mr. Halsey, sir, and all women like to lie twice in a while. I'm just lyin' to you now, because the birds is singin' and the weather is so fine.
 
"Listen! Anny woman that's goin' to be happy is goin' to be happy because of the stomach she has for eatin', and the joy she has for dancin', and the heart she has for love of her man and her childern. And anny woman that has her heart in the right place is goin' to stand by them and not by herself; and not by anny one ilse. Try me and see if I'm lyin' now! You're the boss. Fire Jim Sullivan to-day, and see do I stick with him, or do I go with some man that gives me di'monds, and awtamobeels. I'd stick—and so'd anny other woman that loved her man and her childern."
 
"I'm glad you think so, Mrs. Sullivan."
 
"You know I think so! Oh, maybe it's because I wasn't born in this country. Over there, 'tis the woman helps to make the stake. Here, she helps to spend it. 'Tis a fine counthry this—fer policemin. So far as bein' happy in it's concerned, I dunno! Maybe it's the Irish in me that's happy, and not the American. I dunno again. 'Tis all a question which you want to be, rich or happy!"
 
"Or useful!" ventured Halsey.
 
"They're the same. Bein' useful is bein' happy. Ain't it the truth?"
 
Halsey nodded again and Mrs. Sullivan reached once more for h............