eezes, work must be attended to.

The young man stayed in the house for a week, and during his sojourn
there he met the lady. She fair, young, brooding! he also young,
silent, and angry! After the first look had passed between them, there
was little more to be said. They came together as though they had been
magnetised. Love or passion, by whatever name it is called, was born
abruptly. There is a force in human relations drawing too imperatively
for denial; defying self-interest, and dragging at all anchors of duty
and religion. Is it in man only the satisfaction of self? Egotism
standing like a mountain, and demanding, "Give me yourself or I will
kill myself." And women! is their love the degradation of self, the
surrender and very abasement of lowliness? or is it also egotism set on
a pinnacle, so careless and self-assured as to be fearful of nothing?
In their eyes the third person, a shadow already, counted as less than
a shadow. He was a name with no significance, a something without a
locality. His certain and particular income per annum was a thing to
laugh at . . . there was a hot, a swift voice speaking--"I love you,"
it said, "I love you": he would batter his way into heaven, he would
tear delight from wherever delight might be--or else, and this was
harder, a trembling man pleading, "Aid me or I perish," and it is
woman's instinct not to let a man perish. "If I help you, I hurt
myself," she sighed; and, "Hurt yourself, then," sighed the man; "would
you have me perish. . .?"

So the owner by purchase smiled--

"You are mine," said he, "altogether mine, no one else has a lien upon
you. When the weather is fine I will take you for drives in the
sunshine. In the nights we will go to the opera, hearkening together
to the tenor telling his sweet romanza, and when the wintry rain beats
on the windows you will play the piano for me, and so we will be happy."

When he was quite recovered he went back to his office, and found that
one of his clerks had not arrived--this angered him; when he returned
home again in the evening, he found that his wife was not there. So
things go.

II

He was one of those who shy at the _tete-a-tete_ life which, for a long
time, matrimony demands. As his wedding-day approached he grew fearful
of the prolonged conversation which would stretch from the day of
marriage, down the interminable vistas, to his death, and, more and
more, he became doubtful of his ability to cope with, or h