ditation into moods of gayety
and affection which were more charming than I can describe.

She would romp, mind and body, in all the freshness of youth, with the
most entrancing grace of movement and with her natural brilliant play of
thought.

"I belong to you!" she would exclaim, retreating before my advance.
"Come--take me!"

Then, after I had captured her and she had looked up at me, wrinkling
her nose playfully, she would suddenly grow serious, and from her
smiling eyes tears of happiness would start, and then, for an hour
afterward, she would go singing snatches of song through the house. So
that more than once I saw Margaret Murchie stop her household task to
listen, shut her old eyes and say, "Thank God for his care of her."

It need not surprise you that I tell you of her, for, as you may
understand when I have told you all, I am now facing circumstances
which, for some reason, have caused me to fall in love with her with a
strange, new, and even deeper desire, and which raise the necessity for
me to save her from some unrevealed menace and win her a second time.

The extraordinary fact in the light of this new situation is that our
married life has been, until a year ago, as peaceful as could be.
Whatever I might have suffered at first from the fact that I had been
forbidden to know or ask of the past, these stings soon lost their power
to disturb me. I was glad to forget them because I so hated all things
which might tend to disturb the well-ordered life with which well-bred
families retain their respectable position.

We found our tastes adapted to a common enjoyment of outdoor and
intellectual pleasures, and we spent many hours each week, when alone,
in reading the books which pleased us and in playing duets, in which I,
being an indifferent player of the piano, contrasted my cold technique
with the warmth and expression of her performances upon the 'cello.
Indeed, we showed ourselves in these duets as in our companionship, for
though I loved her, I believe I may have fallen short in those
attentions, those little demonstrations and caresses, upon which some
women seem to be nourished. As for her, she remained unchanged by
marriage or time. By her humor, her tender sympathy, her refreshing,
unaffected ways, she won a large and devoted circle of acquaintance,
composed of both women and men. If any of the former, however, desired
intimacy, they always found a gentle resistance; if the latter, they
were