A Philosopher With an Eye for Beauty

ARTHUR SANDS stood in the drawing-room and waited for Miss Amy Lunt to come down and receive him. His cheviot shirt and gaiters suggested that he had ridden over to the Lunts’ on either a horse or a bicycle ; his erect carriage settled the matter in favor of the nobler animal. He was not an Apollo, but he had as much beauty as one expects of a man; and though a closely cut beard covered the lower part of his face, the lines of his chin showed through sufficiently to prove that the covering was designed for an ornament, not for a screen. Taken all in all, he was not the sort of man that most young women would have kept waiting for twenty minutes. But Sands had watched the minute-hand of the clock move over more than a third of its monotonous race-track before he heard on the stairs the quick patter that he was waiting for, and it was perhaps five seconds later when Amy danced into the room with a step as light as Ellen Douglas’s,though far less dignified. “The sweetest girl in the world, and the last I should want to marry,” had been Sands’s description of her the night before.

She saw in one instant that he was irritated, and in the next how to allay his irritation. She stopped in front of him, pouting, and would not shake hands.

“ I had on my brown dress, and I knew you did n’t like it, so I changed it for this green one that you used to like, and now — and now ” —

Arthur’s injured pride was turned in a moment to humble pleas for pardon. This was precisely what “ the sweetest girl in the world ” wanted, and having converted him, by the magic of one little lie, from an injured sovereign to an erring vassal, she gradually allowed him to assume a position of something like equality.

“ A philosopher with an eye for beauty ” Arthur’s most intimate friend had called him. An eye for beauty ! It is a peculiarity that is apt to accompany great minds. You may be sure it was not Xanthippe’s amiability which led the wisest man in the world to marry her. A philosopher with an eye for beauty sitting on a sofa with the sweetest girl in the world, and the last that the philosopher would want to marry ! Good heavens ! what can be done before it is too late ?

Before Miss Lunt sat down with the philosopher, she stood for a moment looking out of the oriel window at the sunset. She was sensitive to beauty of all kinds, and as she gazed at the white stretch of snow and the pillar-like elms and the clear glow lighting up the winter sky behind, a serious look crossed her girlish face, a look which was all the more fascinating because it was so rare. The next minute she had danced across the room and was beside her visitor on the sofa.

They talked of people, then of other people, then of still other people; and then, strange to say, of books. Miss Lunt had an object in introducing this unusual topic ; she generally had an object in what she said.

“I don’t like Meredith,” she remarked; “ he’s too hard to understand. But why do I talk to you of such things? You look on me as a perfect fool, a mere plaything, that it’s fun to talk to just so as to hear what she ’ll say ! ”

Like Mademoiselle Bernhardt and other great actresses, Miss iss Amy Lunt had real tears ready at a moment’s notice, and she also resembled them in that she felt her pretended emotions almost as much as if they had been real.

“I don’t think you’re a fool at all,” Sands said, laying his hand on her arm. “ I think you ’re the sweetest girl in the world! ”

“ And the last that you ’d want to marry ! ” Amy said. Oh, how fast epigrams fly ! She buried her face in her hands, and sobbed like a little girl.

It was a critical moment, and Amy knew it. Either he would put his arm round her and tell her that he did want to marry her, or else he would not. As a matter of fact, he did.

“ Why, the man’s a fool! ” I think I hear the reader say, flinging down my poor story in disgust. What’s the matter, reader? Do you want all the people you read about to be sensible ? No ? Only the heroes ? A sensible hero ! My dear reader, I really cannot waste time talking to you.

The Sandses were one of the oldest families in the world. They traced their descent from several persons of eminence: from William Penn, from Roger Sherman, from King Egbert, and through the kings of Wales to a celebrated Hebrew whose genealogy joins right on where the Bible leaves off. So if the grand old gardener and his wife wanted to smile at the Sandses’ ancestors, they were reduced to the humiliating occupation of smiling at themselves. Arthur’s father and mother lived on Locust Street, in an orthodox Philadelphia house, red brick, with white doorsteps, door, shutters, and window-sill; only their house was twice as broad as its neighbors, and had two windows on each side of the front door. Mr. Sands had inherited a fortune from his father, and had invested it all in Pennsylvania Railroad stock. Can anything be conceived of more respectable, more honorable, than the facts I have mentioned ? Some envious cavilers, whose grandfathers were probably fishmongers, pointed out that none of the Sandses had ever been known to do anything. But, as Arthur’s father observed, what was there for them to do ? You might as well find fault with the man who stands on the summit of Everest because he does n’t climb.

The Sandses were naturally irritated that the future head of their family should become engaged to a person named Lunt. The Lunts were not descended from any one ; at least so Mr. Sands said, though such a statement would be difficult to believe on any less trustworthy authority. After a bitter mental struggle, Mrs. Sands (who had been a MacSparen) put her pride in her pocket, and asked Miss Lunt to spend a week in Philadelphia. Amy went, and had a very gay time. As she was staying with Mrs. Sands, and was engaged to Arthur, she was asked everywhere. She would have been, as Charlie Peters observed, even if her name, instead of being Amy Lunt, had been Lucy Fur. But Mrs. Sands’s arctic politeness and the constant effort of always behaving a little better than came natural made Amy glad to get back to Hartford again, where every one did not have quite so many ancestors, and where Mr. Lunt was not in the least looked down upon because his occupation chanced to be that of selling boots.

Arthur, as we have seen, had no especial reason for asking Amy to marry him, unless the fact that a woman is pretty and happens to he crying in your arms can be considered to constitute a sufficient reason for inviting her to be your wife. Miss Amy, on the other hand, had a great many reasons for wishing to marry Arthur. In the first place, he had a grand way about him, which he probably had inherited from King Egbert, or possibly from Abraham, and which had the effect of making all the other men in the neighborhood look small. Then he was good ; and Amy had seen enough of the world to know that, next to distinction, goodness is the best quality to have in a husband. Then he was rich ; and I hope no one will think the worse of my heroine because she did not object to that. He was clever, too, though it was Amy’s opinion that he possessed just enough weak points for a skillful wife to guide him as she liked. He was big and strong, and what woman does not like to have a husband who can knock people down ? Not that the accomplishment is of much practical value, but it is nice to know that he can. Arthur belonged to one of the best families in Philadelphia, too, and although blood was not one of Amy’s hobbies, she was far from undervaluing it. But these were all general reasons. What really brought Amy to the point was the fact that she found herself practically engaged to two young men at the same time, and discovered that the simplest way out of her difficulty was to marry a third.

The engagement was not a long one. “ Periculum in moral,” aiul Amy did not want to lose Arthur. She took advantage of some of his nonsense about how he wished he could be married to-morrow, and named an early day, so that the whole engagement did not last two months. There was a grand wedding in the Centre Church, and Mr. Lunt had his annual shop-worn sale a month earlier than usual, so as to meet the extraordinary expense. He confessed that he spent more than he could afford, to prove to the Quakers that Philadelphia was not the only place in the world. But as Mr. and Mrs. Sands were the only Philadelphians who took the trouble to come, and as both of them were hopelessly convinced of the truth of the theory he wished to disprove, he felt that a large part of his outlay had been wasted. However, his daughter was married, and that was one reason why he had spent the money.

As to the two young men to whom Amy had previously plighted herself, they took different courses. I need hardly mention that they both sent her ruinously magnificent presents ; that form of biting revenge is, I believe, always resorted to under the circumstances. If they imagined Amy’s false heart to be chilled to remorse by these posthumous offerings of affection, they were egregiously deceived. If she ever thought of Franklin McElroy while using his beautiful silver breakfast service, it was only to reflect that she had got out of a bad scrape extremely well. And John Johns’s great Dutch clock could never tick any self-condemnation into the place where Amy’s heart ought to have been. McElroy afterwards married his typewriter, and never ate his breakfast without inwardly cursing his folly when he saw his wife pouring out his coffee from a copper coffee-pot. Johns married ail elderly widow, whose charms were the more permanent as they were chiefly pecuniary. To return to Amy’s wedding, McElroy was present, and even went so far as to kiss the bride, who naïvely observed in a whisper that it was n’t the first time. Johns, a wiser man than his colleague in misery, stayed away.

It seems to be a generally accepted theory that a story in which the hero and heroine die immediately after their marriage is a tragedy. I feel that even the reader, for whose mental powers, though I have recently taken occasion to slight them, I really have a high regard, is of this opinion. But did it ever strike the reader what sort of a married life Hernani and Doña Sol would have passed, or how Romeo and Juliet would have fared at breakfast, that criterion of conjugal happiness ? Does Romeo’s behavior toward Rosaline (very likely a nicer girl than Juliet) augur well for his constancy towards Mrs. Montague (born Capulet) ? Can you imagine greater torments than those which the romantic mountain ranger Hernani would have endured if condemned to a lifelong sentence of fine clothes, blank verse, and a faultless wife ? Before you accuse a story of ending badly, just think how it might have ended if it had not ended as it did. Given two such creatures as Romeo and Juliet, I think Shakespeare did remarkably well.

As fortune, good or bad, would have it, Arthur Sands and his wife did not meet with violent deaths shortly after their marriage. When their wedding journey was over, they came back to Hartford, and took up their quarters in the large house in Prospect Street which Arthur had purchased some months before. Like a man who, merely because he felt like jumping, has leaped an abyss so wide that he finds himself unable to recross it, Arthur was now in an excellent position to contemplate the advantages of the ground he had just left.

There are three stages of love, through which some persons pass, and some do not. The first is just love, pure and simple ; the second is love returned, or engaged love ; and the third is legally permanent, or married love. Fortunately, most people are more in love after they are engaged than they were before their engagement, and still more in love when they are married, — at least for a while ; so much so that those of their friends who are sensible avoid them for a time. But as Arthur and Amy had never, strictly speaking, been in love at all, their love could not grow any more than zero can grow, no matter how many times you keep multiplying it. Arthur kept multiplying his love for Amy by all sorts of things, good resolutions, prayers, thoughts about her beauty, kisses, everything you can think of, and it stayed just the same ; that is to say, it was non-existent. It was a pity that it did not amount to something at first; even a very small fraction would have been sufficient. It is wonderful how large a little bit of a fraction will grow, if you only multiply it enough.

As to Amy, I cannot exactly tell you what she was thinking about. I can tell just what she did, and that will have to suffice. You see she was a very peculiar person, and her motives and aims were so utterly astounding and so involved that even if I could unravel them, I doubt if the reader could comprehend them. Amy had her wooden bowl at last; but the trouble with wooden bowls is that there are very few uses to which they can be put. They have a disagreeable way, too, of being split here and there; and often you find the workmanship very rough and incomplete, when you get the bowl into your possession and can examine it closely. And when you are pretty well out of conceit with it, you catch sight of another wooden bowl, — such a lovely one ; and although it is on an upper shelf, so that you cannot see it very well, yet you are confident that this one is exquisite in design and perfect in execution ; then you get chairs and boxes and step-ladders, and you climb and climb, and either you get it or you don’t; but in either case, the first wooden bowl is relegated to its uses as a bowl, and, while it sometimes proves serviceable, it never calls forth any more enthusiasm on your part, though sometimes the neighbors admire it.

Arthur Sands was an intellectual man, and was extremely fond of reading. He possessed that aristocratic literary taste which leads some men to prefer honestly the books which the majority of mankind has agreed in preferring. He was continually reading the English classics. He liked Mr. Richard Harding Davis well enough, but he preferred Shakespeare. Before his marriage he spent a large part of his leisure time in reading; and one of the things he was proud of in Amy was her fondness for books. He looked forward to passing many happy evenings with her, in front of a blazing fire, reading Scott or Hawthorne aloud. Amy encouraged him in this vision of mild pleasure, though she had but little expectation of ever seeing it realized.

Amy liked to read, too ; but Shakespeare and Milton and Scott had no charm for her. She had even graduated from Thackeray, or thought she had. In common with many other persons, she had somehow acquired the sensation of having read all the standard books without really ever having been through the tedious process of reading them. She had said so many times that she had read Paradise Lost that she felt just about as if she had. But to any one who knew her well — Arthur did not, at the time of his marriage — the idea of Amy Lunt sitting down to read Milton, or Carlyle, or Macaulay, or Matthew Arnold, or Green, or even Washington Irving, was too absurd to be taken seriously. The truth is, she had never read ten pages of any one of those authors. She liked Shelley, and had read a little of Keats ; but Swinburne was the poet that she doted upon. The swooning luxuriousness of his verse enchanted her, and his utterly perverted moral standard was a sauce which seasoned long pages of verses which would otherwise have contained little to interest her. Edgar Allan Poe was the only American author that she cared for. She read principally in French, and books which Arthur would not have allowed in his house before his marriage were strewn freely about his tables after it. The truth was, Amy liked an author with a highly stimulated imagination ; and if it happened to be diseased, why, so much the better.

“ Now what shall we read ? ” said Arthur cheerfully, as he and his wife sat in front of the fire, the second evening after their return from their wedding journey. “ Jane Austen, or George Eliot, or The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table ? ”

“ I don’t care, Arthur, — anything. I feel rather tired to-night.”

“ My poor child ! But it will rest you to hear a little reading. I ’ll tell you : I ’ll pick out something and begin to read it, and then you can guess what it is.”

He went to a bookcase, took down a book, opened it, and began to read : —

“ ' With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder in the village of Hayslope ’ — Now you know,” Arthur said, interrupting himself. “ Of course the 1 Hayslope ’ would give it away, even if you had n’t remembered Jonathan Burge. Did n’t you always feel sorry for Mary Burge ? Adam was so disagreeable to her.”

“ Yes, he was horrid,” Amy said, wondering what the book could be. Then she boldly observed, “ Adam was a pretty mean fellow, anyway, I think.”

Arthur looked at her to see if she was joking. You don’t really mean that, do you, Amy ? ” he inquired.

“ No, of course I did n’t,” Amy rejoined hurriedly. “ Go ahead, Arthur.”

Arthur read very well, and was, naturally, a little proud of the unusual accomplishment. When he finished the first chapter, he paused for a moment for Amy to say how much she liked the book, and also, perhaps, how well she thought he read.

“ That’s the stupidest stuff I ever heard,” she said, yawning.

Arthur bit his lip ; but he was a person who seldom lost his self-control, — not often enough, perhaps.

“ You ’re tired, Amy,” he said, rising, and stroking her hair. “ You ought to go to bed, dear. We can go on with the book to-morrow night.”

“ Oh no, I ’m not especially tired,” Amy replied coolly. “ I’m only bored with that book. I ’ll tell you what we ’ll do. You sit and read that, and I ’ll run upstairs and get Une Femme. Then we ’ll both be happy.”

Again Arthur kept his temper. “ Very well,” he replied, and, returning to his seat, he began to read to himself. Amy brought her novel downstairs, and there for a couple of hours they sat; Arthur reading a book describing the manliest of men, Amy a work whose title should have been A Woman, Little As You Might Think It.

And so ended the reading aloud that poor Arthur had imagined as one of the pleasantest parts of his married life. Hundreds of stories, poems, plays, and histories, all narrowed down in an instant to one short chapter in a novel! “The way of the world,” Arthur said bitterly to himself. He was perfectly right. It is the way of the world that if you marry a woman who does not like reading aloud, you must read by yourself. There were plenty of women in Hartford who liked reading aloud. Why did not Arthur marry one of them ?

There are some marriages in which the man and the woman seem perfectly suited to each other, the virtues of the one successfully balancing the faults of the other ; enough similarity to make life pleasant, enough divergence to make it interesting, enough love and trust to utterly snow under any misunderstanding that may arise. These are the marriages which have suggested to an optimistic world that matches are made in heaven. There are other matches which would seem to have been arranged in a very different locality. There are cases where it would seem to a man’s friends that he has deliberately united himself to the most unsuitable helpmate that could possibly be found; that he would have done far better if he had gone to a dance and asked the first girl who came downstairs to marry him. Perhaps he would have done better, but probably not. In the first place, we must remember that a man cannot choose a wife from among all the girls he knows, but only from among such as will have him ; that narrows most of us down to an absurd degree. Secondly, there are influences constantly at work in married life to bring out the bidden differences in two natures. Your friend might not get on so well with that first girl who came downstairs, after all. To look at them and hear them talk, you would think they were well suited to each other. They are both tall and handsome, and they are talking enthusiastically about skating. Yet she detests smoking, and will not have it in the house; and he must have his three cigars a day, and certainly will not pull his easy-chair outdoors to smoke them. She is an ardent prophet of woman’s rights, and he has brought his fist down on the table and sworn that his wife, at least, shall never vote. Imagine him, with a cigar in his mouth, telling her to stay at home when she wants to go to a rally !

Arthur Sands, then, might have done worse. I happen to know the disagreeable things that occurred in his married life ; but worse things might have occurred if he had married some one else. Yet Arthur was a fine man in his way, and I cannot help thinking that there are women in the world who could have made him happy. Years before he married Amy, he had asked another woman to marry him. She might have made him a better wife, but she refused him, while Amy, as we have seen, accepted him a little before she was asked. The trouble with the marriage of Amy and Arthur was that the qualities in her which had induced him to propose — so far as his proposal was voluntary — were not those which he cared anything about after they were married. Chief among them was beauty ; but beauty may change to ugliness when we know the key to a face, just as ugliness may change to beauty. So soon as we have seen a beautiful face with an evil expression upon it. we do not care so much about looking at it If we see such an expression often, the face becomes hateful to us. The mouth, however it may smile, looks cruel, the nose proud, the eyes deceitful. An ugly face lighted up by goodness is good enough for me ; and many a man will come home to-night and kiss such a face, and thank God that some haughty beauty refused him ; and after supper he will sit in front of the fire, and watch the dear old eyes, and the dear turned-up nose, and the good generous mouth, with a very different feeling from that with which Arthur watched Amy. For beauty is not in itself a virtue, but only an ornament to virtue. Snakes are beautiful, but people don’t like to look at them. They are graceful, but people don’t like to watch their motions, except when they are going away. Almost any one would prefer to look at a toad, which, though ugly, has no disagreeable characteristics, except the unproved and certainly involuntary fault of giving people warts. Beauty, like illustrious lineage, makes nobility nobler, but it goes about as far towards improving wickedness or incompetency as a bright sun and a blue sky go towards making the day on which you have lost your mother seem agreeable.

Arthur was a religious man ; not one of those who obtrude Scriptural texts and spiritual admonitions into his conversation, but one who prayed every night on his knees, and a good deal on his feet in the daytime ; one who went to church every Sunday and made good resolutions, and who carried them out pretty conscientiously during the week; one who did not groan when he heard a man swear, and who could pound out an oath or two himself when it was absolutely necessary, but who had the accomplishment of making slanderers feel uncomfortable, and who came down like a falling house on mean or dirty conversation. He never appeared to better advantage than when he lost his temper ; and as I have already hinted, it was a pity he lost it so seldom. Religion meant a great deal to him: it had determined his decision in every important crisis of his life except his marriage, which, as we have seen, may be considered, like a thunderstorm or an earthquake, as a phenomenon of nature, something beyond his control.

As to Amy’s religious views, they are worth dwelling on, because I conceive them to be very similar to those of a great many young ladies of the present day. Without ever having taken the trouble to investigate the doctrines of any religious belief, she pronounced them all to be absurd. Now there is no fault to be found with a man who has sounded every faith to its depths, and who, dissatisfied with all, becomes a freethinker. He may be unfortunate, but he does not appear to be in fault. Amy, however, having sounded nothing except a trumpet of defiance to all recognized faiths, became what may be termed a free non-thinker. The curious part of it was that she had a vague feeling of superiority to those who, like Arthur, belonged to some established order of religious belief. It is a very noticeable fact that Colonel Ingersoll, Professor Huxley, and others who attack the inspiration of the Bible are more familiar with the book than many of those who hold it in higher honor than they. Amy knew nothing about the Bible, except that she did not believe in it.

Are n’t you coming to church with me?” Arthur said, one Sunday morning. You have n’t a headache, or cold, or anything. No excuse. Come on, Amy ! ”

Amy thought the struggle might as well take place now as at any time.

“No, I don’t believe T ’ll come,” she said languidly. “ And to tell you the truth, Arthur, I don’t intend to do much going to church, ever. It does n’t do me a bit of good ; it does me harm to hear a man say a lot of stuff with impunity, when I could shut him up easily enough if he’d only let me answer him. I don’t object to other people’s going, if they want to; but as for me, it does me lots more good to sit at home and read some serious book that makes me think.”

Arthur looked at the book in her hand. It was a volume of short stories by Guy de Maupassant. He left the room without speaking.

The Sandses had preserved the old Quaker custom of having a silent grace at meals. Arthur, who had been accustomed to it ever since he was a baby, tried to introduce it into his own household ; but after a few weeks of endurance Amy’s patience gave out.

“ Come. Arthur,” she said, “ you can keep quiet all you want, but I ’m not going to sit like Patience on a something or other, just because you happen to be thanking God! It seems to me the worst of all times to thank him, anyway, before you know whether the dinner’s going to be good or not! ”

The silent grace was discontinued.

Arthur was sadly disappointed because his wife proved to be utterly without religion of any kind; but he had no real right to his sense of injury. She was not a sham; she had not secured him by false pretenses. He married her because she was pretty and charming; and she certainly was both. He did not find out, after they were married, that her hair was false or that her face was enameled; she could be just as merry and winning after their marriage as she was before. The trouble was in him. He suddenly changed his standards. Before marriage he cared for nothing but beauty and charm; afterwards he gave no thought to those qualities, but was all for intellect and religion, and because Amy did not possess those peculiarities he was disappointed in her. But she had never pretended to be wise or religious. He was like a man who purchases an English thoroughbred because it is handsome and has magnificent paces ; and after bringing it home, becomes accustomed to its beauty and grace, but feels indignant with it because it cannot haul stones or work at the plough, and wishes he had bought a cart-horse. There are all sorts of horses, and all sorts of women ; and people ought to get the kind they want.

One of the problems which young married people have to face is the question of how much they shall go into society. Shall they go out to dinner three nights in a week, and go out immediately after dinner the four other nights ? Or shall they stay quietly at home six nights, and go to the theatre the seventh ? If they are very fond of each other, they generally like staying at home ; if they are not, they like to go where they can see some one else.

It soon proved that Arthur, who, though he never, strictly speaking, loved Amy, yet had a very respectable imitation of love for her, preferred to stay at home, while Amy wanted to go out as often as possible. Now, though Arthur had a much stronger character than his wife, it was very noticeable that, in their disputes, she almost invariably got her way. The truth was that Arthur was so heavily handicapped that he had no chance. He had to consider not only what he wanted, but how far he could go on his side of the argument without bringing on some sort of rupture between Amy and himself. Amy, on the other hand, thought of nothing but what she wanted, and depended entirely on him to guard against ruptures. He was the stouter swordsman, but she fought with a rapier, while he was obliged to use a foil with a button on the end. Buttons sometimes come off, though, and then — one, two, three ! a long carte thrust, and half a foot of crimsoned steel shows well enough whose wrist is the stronger.

As yet, however, the button was securely fastened to Arthur’s foil.

“ Why, Arthur, are n’t you dressed yet ? Did n’t you know we ’d accepted for the Trimbles’ dance ? ”

“Oh, Amy, have we got to go out tonight ? Why, we were at the Danverses’ last night, and the Winthrops’ the night before ; and to-morrow night, you know, we ’ ve got tickets for Julia Marlowe. Do let ’s stay in one evening in the week !

“ Now, upon my word, Arthur, this is too ridiculous! For Heaven’s sake, stay at home, if you want to ! I can tell them you ’re sick ; or perhaps we can invent a lie that will suit your conscience better than that one. We need n’t stick close together all the time. I like parties, so I ’ll go to them. You like staying at home and reading, so you need n’t go. If you’d rather be with your book than with me, all right. Only don’t blame me if — if ” —

Here Amy burst into tears: whether they were involuntary or manufactured I shall not pretend to say. At any rate, they answered their purpose. Arthur embraced her, and told her that he would go ; and after a suitable amount of April weather the sun came out from behind the clouds, and Arthur received a kiss and Amy’s forgiveness.

A series of victorious battles does not always mean a victorious war. Louis XIV. kept whipping William of Orange time after time, and yet, when it was all over, somehow or other William had come out ahead. Amy and Arthur had had a great many encounters, and Amy had been victorious every time ; but, as was the case with the Grand Monarch, her supplies were getting exhausted. As a last resource, she had always been able to conquer Arthur’s resistance by crying ; but crying is like everything else, — people don’t think much of it when they ’re used to it. A rainstorm in the Desert of Arabia would drive the natives wild with awe and delight; but a rainstorm in Boston only makes the inhabitants feel like swearing.

Arthur was becoming annoyingly callous, so that Amy had to keep her rapier very sharp, and prod him more and more vigorously with it. Still, she was able to hold him pretty well in order as yet. He went to parties more and more unwillingly ; but he went. The parties were pleasant enough, and he would have enjoyed going out, say, once a week; but to listen to Mrs. Potts of Hartford, and Miss Dillingham of Farmington, every night, when he might be listening to Shakespeare and Goethe and Victor Hugo, was beginning to bore him beyond endurance. The button on the end of his foil was getting loose.

Then a sudden check came to war and rapiers and foils and hostile feelings. Amy announced to Arthur that a child was to be born to them. From that moment till months after the baby was born, insubordination on Arthur’s part was at an end. He could endure anything so long as there was a reason for Amy’s querulousness and selfishness. He recognized that, in such a position, husband and wife have each a part to play : she has her sufferings to endure; he, her complaints. It is the custom of a not quite heartless world to draw a generous line through the weaknesses and follies, the fault-finding and irritability, of a woman who is waiting for her child to be born. Let us follow the world’s example.

The baby proved to be a girl. She was named Caroline, after Mrs. Sands senior. “ Your mother ’ll probably do more for her than mine,” Amy had said to Arthur.

Arthur was prodigiously fond of the child, and Amy really wanted to be. She would watch her husband with a wistful expression as lie made a fool of himself over the baby, and almost wish that she could be silly like that too. But her efforts to become fond of Caroline, if efforts she made, were unsuccessful; and many and many a time she was out at a dinner-party when Arthur was helping the nurse put the baby to bed. For you can’t begin loving all of a sudden, any more than you can become a great general without preparation. If you want to be a distinguished commander, you must go to West Point, and then be a lieutenant for five years, and a captain for ten, and a major for three, and so on. You can’t go through all the ranks in five minutes, like Fritz in La Grande Duchesse. And if a mother is to love a child with the real true mother’s love, she must have loved her own mother, and her father, and her brothers and sisters, and lots of friends, and her husband more than all the rest put together. She can’t begin without practice. Amy had an instinctive affection for her child, there was no doubt about that; the same affection that a lion, or a dog, or a snake, for aught I know, has for its young. She could not bear to hear it cry, and when it was vaccinated she flew at the doctor when she saw blood on the little arm. But she had not the slightest wish to nurse the child, so that, on the whole, perhaps, her affection was not quite the same as that of the lioness.

Children often renew the bond between husband and wife, so that those who are drifting apart are drawn together again. But little Caroline was not successful as a mediator. Arthur would sit with her on his knee, and talk to her complainingly about Amy. “ She’s gone away and left us all alone, baby, just because she wants to dance with that Colonel Harrison, who ’s on the governor’s staff. I ’ll colonel him, won’t I, baby ? But before that, she’s going to dine at the Trimbles’. The dinner ’ll be over just about when you go to bed ; and then Mrs. Potts will sing ; but never you mind, baby, for papa ’ll sing to you, and papa can sing better than she can. Is n’t it funny that mamma likes to hear Mrs. Potts sing ? ”

From this elegant oration it can be seen that Arthur was beginning to deny himself the pleasure of escorting his wife to evening engagements. Amy was not entirely sorry, for she could behave more as she liked when he was not with her. She was growing afraid of Arthur, just because he never did complain when there was so much to complain of. She wished she knew what was going on inside of him. If she had only heard him say to baby that he would il colonel ” Colonel Harrison, she might have known better what to do ; but baby never told her.

It is remarkable to what an extent people can he talked about and never know it. Colonel Harrison and Mrs. Arthur Sands were both well up in the gossip of Hartford ; but there was one flirtation of which neither had ever heard any one speak, and that was their own. Colonel Harrison was a very handsome man,— his enemies said he was pretty, — with a charmingly pink complexion and beautifully kept finger - nails. He was, to Amy’s mind, the most entertaining talker in Hartford ; at any rate, he was possessed of much more sympathy of a certain kind than Arthur was. For if you told Arthur the story of an adventure in which you had got the better of some one in rather a mean way, the greatest approbation you could expect from him was a grunt; whereas the colonel would be intensely amused, and had a very polite way of alluding to the anecdote at some future occasion. Then the colonel was a man of leisure, and could come and call on Amy while Arthur was stupidly earning his (and her) living. He had the glamour of being considered fast, too, — at least, he was so considered in dear, slow - going old Hartford, — and with some ladies that is a great point. It is a strange fact that many women rather like a man to be fast; when, if they knew the exact things he did, they would be apt to change the adjective to “ vulgar.” One of the most fascinating fast men I know gained a part of his reputation for speed by sitting on a curbstone and throwing the mud of the gutter over his head. No woman would have been especially pleased with his conduct if she had happened to be under his escort at the time. Yet this is, comparatively speaking, a most innocent and even refined occupation for a fast man who really deserves his reputation. Of course there is no use taking the reader into a pigsty, but just multiply that mud-throwing incident by fifty, dearest reader, and then, if you happen to be a young woman, examine the result, and make up your mind whether you want to flirt with a person who does such things, or not. The trouble seems to come from our having a fatal tendency to call a spade a diamond. True, the ace of spades is the hardest card in the pack to distinguish, and it is certainly a most elegant-looking one ; but it is a spade just the same, and we might as well call it so. We are apt to say of a man, “ He’s fast, you know, but he’s a good-hearted fellow.” That is all very well if we know what “ fast ” means. To the average woman, it means getting a little flushed with champagne once in a while, or going to the theatre in rather low company. To me, my friend in the gutter would seem to form rather a good allegorical picture of a fast man, if he had been engaged in throwing some of the mud at other people, and only a portion on his own head.

One day Arthur set out for Philadelphia, and at New Haven received a telegram from his father informing him that the journey was unnecessary. So, like King Shahzenan and other husbands of flirtatious wives, he came home very unexpectedly. He was not in the least surprised to see Colonel Harrison’s dogcart before the door; he had half expected that. But when he entered the house, he saw something better calculated to astonish him. It was a warm day in June, so that he passed into the parlor through the glass door, which stood open. With their backs toward him stood Amy and Colonel Harrison : she reading a letter ; he, with his arm around her, apparently trying to kiss her cheek, an operation which she dexterously avoided by quick movements of her head, while she continued to read the letter.

It was really comical when Colonel Harrison, hearing a step behind him, turned round and encountered Arthur. The fascinating lover was so utterly and evidently inferior in every respect to the injured husband that even Arthur himself saw the humor of the situation. The pretty little fast man and the splendid great respectable one stood face to face for a moment; and at last Amy saw the difference. The beautiful little colonel scowled, and tried to look down his antagonist ; and the general effect was very much as if the leader of the german should endeavor to look down Prince Bismarck. The contrast was too much for Amy, and, though her feelings were wrought to the highest pitch, she burst into a peal of half-hysterical laughter.

Arthur had smiled grimly at first, but he soon became serious again. He and the colonel looked at each other for a moment. and then Arthur said. “ Will you come outside on the piazza, Colonel Harrison ? I have something to say to you.”

Colonel Harrison tried to speak. His voice failed him. He held himself very straight as he followed Arthur ; but in spite of all he could do, a look of terror crossed his face, which Amy did not fail to detect. She supposed that Arthur was going to chastise him in some way ; but she made no attempt to interfere. “ The little fool ! ” she said to herself. “ He’s in for it now, and I’m glad of it! ” And then she began to wonder how she should get out of her own scrape.

Outside on the piazza everything went very quietly.

“ I want to ask you to take your leave now, Colonel Harrison,” Arthur said, “ and also to request you not to come here again. Will you oblige me so far ? ”

“ Do you mean to kick me out of the house?” the colonel sputtered.

“ Only if you won’t go any other way,” Arthur replied. “ When I came into the room there, my first impulse was to throw you out of the window ; but the next moment I realized that the fact that you were small and weak was no reason why I should attack you, when I might have been afraid of a stronger man than I. However, it’s only fair to warn you that my patience is going fast.”

Colonel Harrison scowled again, and walked away with the same dignity which a boy exhibits when he scornfully leaves his comrades, —very grand, but expecting a snowball in the back of his bead at any minute.

When Arthur came back into the room, Amy was crying. She ran up to him and caught his hands in hers. “ I have n’t done anything wrong, Arthur ! she protested. “ Honestly I have n’t. You don’t think I have, do you ? ”

Arthur looked at her coldly. “ Why, no,” he said deliberately. “ I don ’t believe you ever did more than flirt with the little man. You have n’t enough of a heart to forget yourself entirely, Amy. Oh no, I don’t believe you went very far with the colonel. He isn’t exactly the sort of man to be jealous of.”

Amy looked imploringly up into his face. “ Then you ’ll forgive me, won’t you, Arthur ? And it will all be the way it used to be when we were first married, and we both loved each other better than all the world ? ”

“ I can’t recall the time you speak of,” he said. “ As to forgiving you, I ‘ve just learnt what sort of a woman you are, Amy, and I can’t unlearn it merely because you go down on your knees and beg me to. I shan’t bear any malice or keep alluding to Colonel Harrison, — I can promise you that, at any rate. But you need n’t bother to cry ; it does n’t have any effect on me.”

Amy looked at him with wide-opened eyes. “ You’ve never talked to me so before,” she said in a frightened tone. “ I’m afraid you don’t care for me any more, Arthur.”

“No,” he answered, “I’m afraid T don’t.”

The button had come off the foil.

After a little pause, during which there seemed to be a great deal of electricity in the air, Arthur spoke again : “ It ’s only fair to tell you, Amy, that I’ve told Colonel Harrison not to come here any more. If you meet him anywhere else, perhaps you will be so good as not to know him.”

Amy looked up at the stern face before her. Was this her husband? “ Very well, Arthur,” she replied ; “ just as you say.”

“ And now,” he went on, “we ’re both a little over-excited, so I guess I ’ll go in town. No, not now, Amy! ” As she endeavored to kiss him, he put her aside, though not unkindly. Then, stopping at the door, “ Will you be at home to dinner to-night ? ”

“ I will if you want me to.”

“ Thank you, I should prefer it.” With that he went out.

Amy flung herself into an armchair and tried to think. The events of the last half-hour had so completely changed her position that she could not accommodate herself to her new surroundings. Her husband proved to be a different sort of man from what she had expected. She felt like Baron Munchausen’s horse, who thought he was tied to a small post, and the next morning found himself hitched to a steeple.

The truth is — and every woman must learn it sooner or later — a man is a very different sort of person when he’s in love with you and when he is n’t. No autocracy can be more complete than that which a woman exercises over the man who loves her, even if his love, like Arthur’s, is really only an extremely good imitation of love. A smile or a frown can raise him to the clouds or cast him down into the pit; a nod is sufficient to send him on the most difficult and dangerous enterprise ; the least unkindness gives him pain; he throws away his armor, and exposes his naked breast to the arrows of her scorn and the poisoned darts of her satire. His nature bends the knee to hers, and she gives him agony or bliss with a word. It matters not how noble he is, or how frivolous she. That only accentuates matters. The nobler he is, the lowlier he kneels ; the more frivolous she, the more she delights to scorn him. But when he awakes from his dream, mark the contrast. He recovers entirely from his infatuation in an instant ; she cannot help caring for him a little ; nay, she is overcome by a strange feeling of respect for this slave who has suddenly become her equal, and who bids fair to be her master. Her downfall is the more terrible because of the loftiness of her seat. In vain she snatches up the small weapons which she has used so long that she is unaccustomed to anything more formidable. Her arrows and darts drop harmless from her hands as she hears the first boom of cannon sounding from the hostile camp. She never knew he had any artillery !

Of course, if they are not married, the man merely goes away, after having given her a few good showers of grapeshot, and tells the next woman he falls in love with that he never really cared for her predecessor, — “ at least, not the way I care for you ! ” But if they are married, they have to make up their minds to it; and now that all alluring mist is dissipated, and the two see each other as they are, the late autocrat is apt to go to the wall. There was no more temporizing in Arthur’s policy toward his wife. The stronger nature asserted itself at last, and Amy always gave in, and never knew why.

“Well, Amy, are n’t you coming to church ? ”

“ I ve got a headache, Arthur! ”

A look.

“ I ’ll go if you want me to.”

“ I think it would be better.”

When there was a rebellion, it was like the French trying to get out of Sedan,— something that was understood beforehand by the enemy and guarded against.

“ I won’t have Annie sent away ! ”

“ I’ve already sent her away.”

“ I ’ll have her back again.”

“ I told her that she was not to come back. I don’t think she will.”

“ She’s the only maid 1 ever had that I liked! ”

“ She’s a bad woman, Amy; and she is n’t coming back again. Will you please give me a cup of coffee ? ”

“ Arthur ! ” — with tears — “ you have no right to treat me so ! I’m going to go over to mamma’s to-day and live with her till you learn to — to ” —

“ Your mother agrees with me that it was foolish of you to go over there the other time, and she has promised me she won’t take you in again. Come, Amy, do you mean to give me my coffee ? ” Silence, while the coffee is poured out. “ By the way, Amy, I think we’ve had about enough of these outbreaks of yours. They don’t improve your appearance or ray temper. Just think it over, will you ? I guess we can get on without them. Well, I ’m off now. Good-by.”

Amy looked at him as he walked toward the door. “ Are n’t you going to kiss me good-by, Arthur ? ”

He came back and kissed her.

Amy felt a little ashamed of asking for that kiss, but somehow she could not get on without one when Arthur went away. It made her feel respectable. She did not exactly love Arthur, but she depended on him, and she kept admiring him more and more.

As to Arthur, his enforced sternness wore upon him. Like the marksman who cuts his arm and dips each bullet in his own blood, in order to insure his aim, he paid for the complete control that he gained over his wife by a constant drain on his own high spirits and energy. Yet the Colonel Harrison affair, which might have ended in Amy’s utter ruin, compelled him to see that he must keep her under his thumb if he would save her from herself. Amy throve under the treatment. Sometimes it almost seemed as if she really loved her husband ; certainly she came nearer loving him than she had ever been to loving any one else. The new system was a success. But Arthur’s was a nature formed for pleasant, easy, genial intercourse ; and though it had a background of uncommon strength, he hated to use the strength all the time, — just as an orchestra leader would hate to give a concert performed exclusively by his bass viols and trombones.

When a man falls sick, his friends look at his illness in different ways. Some regard it as a misfortune, others as a fault. The larger part of the population of the world, being liable to illness themselves, have a deep sympathy for all sorts of suffering, no matter what foolishness brought it about ; as a mother rubs her child’s knee, and kisses and coddles him, even though he fell down while climbing after the jam pot. But there is a school of reasoners, and I think a growing one, which regards illness as merely the natural result of imprudence.

“ I have a toothache.”

“ How long is it since you went to the dentist ? ”

“Three years.”

“ Then I’m not sorry for you. If you had gone every six months, as I have, you would not be suffering now.”

This logic, besides being disagreeable, is not so sound as it at first appears ; for, granted that the sufferer is in fault, is that any reason why we should not be sorry for him ? Nay, is it not a reason why we should be sorrier for him than ever ? I am sorry for the man unjustly condemned to prison, but I am far sorrier for the man who, besides being compelled to carry chains about with him, is also obliged to carry the consciousness that he deserves them.

Arthur belonged distinctly to the sympathetic school. One day when the streets were drowned in melted snow, Amy went out in her low shoes and caught a bad cold. Arthur had warned her several times against tempting Providence in just that way ; but on returning home he refrained from uttering the four monosyllables the use of which I have sometimes suspected to be the unpardonable sin. In fact, he was very much frightened, though he did not tell Amy so ; for he had noticed, what she herself had never observed, that hers was a constitution which gave no sign of weakness till a total collapse was at hand. She was like a ship with its flag nailed to the mast, so that if you see the flag go down you can be sure the ship is going down too. Arthur had a headache every week or so, and caught cold half a dozen times in a winter; but he bad not been really sick since he could remember. Amy never had headaches — except the convenient kind which all women have, save you, dear reader. Only twice since Arthur had known her had she felt any physical discomfort, and each time she had been seriously ill. So when he came home from the office, and she told him she had a cold, he made her go to bed at once, and sent for the doctor; and when the doctor said he was afraid it was pneumonia, Arthur was not surprised.

It was a great relief to him to be able to behave pleasantly to Amy, and not to have to keep bullying her all the time. After all, there are few pleasures like waiting on a sick person! We do not mind being called martyrs and saints when we do it, but secretly we are perfectly conscious that we like it; or, if we are not conscious of it, we become so as soon as any one else proposes to take our place. For some inscrutable reason, we come to love the invalid all the more because he is so foolish and impatient and exasperating, just as I am very sure the angels in heaven are a great deal fonder of us because we are not mixtures of Socrates and Job and Moses. A great deal of Arthur’s old feeling for Amy came back, now that she was pale and Suffering and had lost her good looks. As for her, she was one of the sick people who are seized with a mania for having one particular person always near. She could hardly eat or go to sleep when Arthur was out of the room.

The trained nurse was with her at night, but Arthur had to be with her almost the entire day. Her sister Isabel came in to help take care of her, but she had to go away again. Amy wanted Arthur. The poor girl had become possessed with the idea that she would not live, and, in spite of the doctor’s prohibition of talking, she insisted on telling her husband a great many things, foolish things that she had done. She told him about the other two engagements by which she had bound herself just before she engaged herself to him, and about a great many other things, some of them wicked, and some only silly. And Arthur would answer her conscience-stricken whispers with a pressure of the hand and a kiss now and then, and would absolve her from all her sins and follies as if he had been a father confessor. Once they talked of Colonel Harrison. Arthur told her how he had met the colonel one dark night on Asylum Avenue, and how the little man had crossed to the opposite side, not supposing that Arthur had seen him. It was pathetic to hear Amy’s weak little laugh at the valiant colonel’s discomfiture. Then Arthur told how he had helped Harrison to get a diplomatic appointment ; and how the colonel had thanked him, and apologized for what he termed his blackguardly conduct; and how Arthur had asked him to come and call on Mrs. Sands when she was on her feet again ; and how the tears had come into the colonel’s eyes, and he had assured Arthur that he had never met such a perfect gentleman. Then Amy laughed once more, and said she should like to see the little fool again, if Arthur would be there too ; but as to being on her feet any more, she never expected that. Sometimes Amy had the baby brought in and spent a long time looking first at Caroline and then at Arthur, and then at a lookingglass in her hand, trying to see how much the child looked like Arthur, and how much like her. And each time she was delighted, for the baby looked exactly like Arthur, and acted like him, too, and apparently had nothing of Amy in her composition.

There is nothing in books that strikes us as so sudden, and usually so inartistic, as the occurrence of a death. “ Orlando died.” Our feeling commonly is, “ I don’t believe it.” The truth is that no amount of preparation can properly furnish the mind for the reception of such a revolutionary statement. That Orlando, whose progress I have perhaps traced for years, whom I have learned to admire, with whom I have almost identified myself, should come to a full stop, should disappear never to return, is too much for my imagination. “ Orlando’s death is too sudden,” I write in my criticism of the book. Yet the suddenness, the shock, the bad taste, if I may say so, of the thing, may all be observed far more strongly in real life. “ Your cousin Margaret is dead,” some one says. “ I don’t believe it.” is again the first response that comes into my mind, though I may not utter it. It is hard to assimilate the fact that she is dead: it is indigestible, and the acids of the mind must work on it a long time before they master it. After hearing that cousin Margaret is dead, I might perhaps be surprised if I were to meet her on the street; but I am almost equally surprised not to meet her.

Amy did not live three weeks from the day on which she fell ill. The doctor had been anxious from the first, for she would not fight against her sickness ; she seemed perfectly content to die. All that she felt uneasy about was the pain and trouble and anxiety she had given Arthur ever since they were married ; and he forgave her all these things so often that after a time she appeared to think of them less. They had one little talk about religion. She asked him what he believed ; and with manly awkwardness he told her his simple faith. She said she would try to believe that, too; for whether it was true or not, if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for her. She kept her consciousness to the end, and just before she died she stretched out her arms to Arthur. He kissed her, and no doubt the poor girl felt that that kiss was the seal of his forgiveness for all the trials she had brought upon him ? for &her face was happy after that, and she smiled at him as he sat by the bedside and held her cold fingers in his great, warm, manly hand. Then the life gradually faded out of her face, and the cold fingers grew colder, and with one final labored throb the foolish, false, repentant little heart stopped beating.

So Arthur was left alone: an older man than the Arthur Sands who asked Amy Lunt to marry him ; a wiser man, perhaps,— perhaps not. For experience does not teach ; it merely accentuates.

Amy’s sister Isabel had been, as a child, one of the most affectionate and unconscious little persons that ever lived. Amy had spoiled her. But, spoiled as she was, the old affection looked out of her great brown eyes, though it might not be in her heart; and whether she was unconscious or not she looked as if she were. Just as Bernadotte or Davout learned from Napoleon how to move armies, so she had learned from Amy how to move men up and down on her board, with all the heartlessness and much of the skill of a professional chess-player. And if the board fell off her lap, and the pieces tumbled into the fire, why, at the worst she could get a new set and start a new game.

Isabel had tried her hand at a little mild flirtation with Arthur while he was still married ; but Arthur was too good a husband for that sort of thing ; and Amy, who could see about as far into a stone post as most people, suggested to Isabel that if she wanted hunting, she had better hunt something else, and leave her sister’s tame buffalo alone. After Amy’s death, however, things were different. Arthur did not deceive himself about Amy : he knew that he had been very unhappy with her. But he was just as wretched now that his home was broken up as if it had been a happy one. He was much at the Bunts’, and Isabel’s sympathy and sisterly tenderness were a great comfort to him.

It is one of the curious things in life how sure we are of the future, and how seldom the future bears us out. I shall love you forever,” the boy says to the girl. What does he know about “forever ’? It is easier to say than “ for five minutes,” and certainly sounds more romantic ; but, as a matter of fact, there are a great many five minutes in the world, and very few forevers. The strange part of the boy’s statement Is that he gives a promise which depends for its fulfillment on forces over which he has absolutely no control. If he had said, “ I shall kiss }rou once a day forever,” or even. “ I shall think of you forever. he might have made a good try at it; but “ I shall love you forever ” ! He might as well say, “ I shall have it sunny weather forever.” This statement might possibly be true, if the boy lived in the Desert of Sahara ; but, true or false, he puts it in a very foolish way, for he has nothing to do with the sun or the rain any more than he has with the motions of his own heart. If a rainstorm came up, he could not send it away ; and if he suddenly stopped loving his sweetheart, no amount of trying could make him begin again.

So when a man loses his wife. If any individual could be found at the same time impudent and courageous enough to ask him, the day after the funeral, if he intended to marry again, the widower would probably awake from his stupor of sorrow long enough to kick the meddler downstairs. But if he could be prevailed upon to give a definite answer, he would say, “ No ! Never! I have enough to do to sorrow over what I have lost! ” Yet the chances are even that he will be married again in two years. The truth is, we don’t know anything about how we shall feel in the future. I know of a lady who woke up one morning and found that she had forgotten everything that had ever happened to her. The same thing happens to us all every morning, to a lesser degree. A man may say, “ X shall mourn for my wife just as deeply twenty years hence as I do to-day ; ” but no amount of saying so will make him do it, and nothing else will make him do it, either. We can regulate the mourning on our hats, but not that in our hearts.

Amy’s illness had brought on an Indian summer to Arthur’s affection, and he never loved her so dearly as the day she died. He grieved for her deeply and truly, and added to his grief by vain regrets because he had not been to her a better husband. It would not be true to say that he determined never to marry again : he never thought about it, any more than he thought about committing murder. It was one of the impossibilities. For some months he went nowhere except to the Lunts’. He felt drawn to them because they shared his grief. They were very kind to him, especially Isabel, who always knew by instinct just what he wanted. When he came in to have her sing and play to him, he did not need to ask her; she knew what he had come for, and she knew just the sort of things he would like to hear. For though she had outgrown her old, simple-hearted, affectionate nature, she could reassume it when she chose ; just as the world-worn actress plays Camille or Fedora, and yet has not forgotten her first part of Little Bo-Peep, though she has not acted it since she was an innocent child.

There are degrees of grief just as there are degrees of joy ; and Arthur was never less miserable than when he sat listening to Isabel’s singing. No one ever sang with deeper feeling than Isabel; and I, for one, do not blame Arthur for thinking that she had a warm, tender heart. It gave him pleasure to look at her, too : she was beautiful at the piano. Her wonderful wavy lightbrown hair and her innocent face formed a quaint but fascinating contrast to the unrelieved black of her dress. A beautiful woman is never so beautiful as when in mourning ; the holiness of sorrow gives her an added charm. When the playing was over, Isabel would talk to Arthur, or more often would listen to him while he told her stories of Amy, and how things would have gone so much better if only he had acted rightly. Then she would comfort him as only an affectionate woman can, and he would shake his head, but smile at the same time, and feel glad he came.

So Arthur became dependent upon Isabel. It was not that he had forgotten Amy : it was because he liked to talk and think about her that he wanted to be with Isabel, — at least it was so at first. Afterwards Isabel’s own charm began to take possession of him. When he was conscious of it, he tried to fight against it; very much as a fly first begins operations for avoiding a spider’s web after he is already securely caught in it. One day Arthur realized that he was walking up the Lunts’ avenue so that he might see Isabel, and not so that he might see Amy’s sister. He stopped on the piazza, irresolute. Perhaps he had better not go in. “ Arthur ! ” came a silver voice from the parlor window. And the jump that his heart gave had very little to do with the woman who had been Mrs. Arthur Sands one short year ago.

Arthur was not entirely deceived about Isabel’s character. Skillful as she was at dissimulation, she could not entirely hide her real self from a man who saw her almost every day, and who, though preoccupied, was far from stupid. But Arthur was a person whose thoughts did not naturally run towards the faults of the girl he was in love with. Though a good orthodox Congregationalist in his religious faith, he was a Unitarian in love matters: he was a firm believer in heaven, and did his best not to think about any other place. He was obliged to see that Isabel was sometimes cross and overbearing to her mother, but he thought the less of it because she was always sunny and considerate to him. Several times he could not help noticing that her sense of honor (a virtue the possession of which is difficult to simulate) was not up to his own high standard. This was hard on Isabel, for, as regarded her sense of honor, by judicious inflation she had managed to make something perilously like nothing assume really respectable proportions ; and for Arthur to notice that it was wavering, and did not seem to be very solid, merely showed that he was hard to satisfy. He perceived more than once that she was talking to produce a certain effect, and not because she really believed the things she said. She saw that he noticed this, but she could not always guard against it. It is hard to pretend to be truthful when you are not because the essence of truth is that you are not pretending.

Isabel knew a great deal better than I do how Arthur ought to be managed, but if I might presume to criticise one little point, I should suggest that she need not have given herself so much trouble to seem better than she was. The gist of the matter was right here: Arthur came to see her because she was sympathetic, affectionate, fascinating, and pretty ; and if he came to see her enough, he would marry her. He did not come to see her because she had a high sense of honor or a great regard for truth. Unfortunately, those qualities do not draw well. In a wife they are of inestimably more importance than fascination or beauty ; but no one ever went to call on a girl because she did not tell lies. When it came to the point, everything went quietly enough. Arthur and Isabel were in the parlor together; Isabel standing in the oriel window looking at the sunset, while Arthur looked at her. Suddenly it came over him that he would give anything in the world for the right to hold that girl in his arms and kiss that cheek which would have tempted a saint. He rose to his feet. “ Isabel! ” he said.

When she turned and their eyes met, she knew that the battle was won.

What’s the matter, reader ? There you are again, hanging my poor story against the table ! What do you mean by calling Arthur a fool and an egregious ass ? I ’d let you know that my hero was neither! He was a man who, having done a foolish thing, was suddenly brought back to the point he started from, and, having another opportunity, did it again. Most of us would. We don’t get much wiser as we get older. Arthur Sands was a good man and a sensible one. He had one weak point: he was peculiarly sensitive to the charm of an attractive and beautiful woman. Carried away by his feelings, he married a foolish, heartless girl, and spent three unhappy years with her. When it was all over, and he had another chance given him, he was carried away by his feelings again, and this time married a girl a little less foolish and a little more heartless than the other. But she was fascinating, — there was no doubt about that. It was all perfectly natural. Unwise he was, perhaps, but who is not unwise in that way ? Do you think you would have escaped, reader, or would have wanted to escape, if Isabel had really undertaken to marry you ?

Robert Beverly Hale.