r career as a sculptor. Consider the injustice you are doing
_me_!"

She refused to take my protest or her friends' comment seriously; and so
we drifted along in pleasant round of parties till the suns of May,
brooding over the land lured us back to the Homestead, in which Zulime
could house-keep all day long if she wished to do so, and she did!

Full of plans for refurnishing and redecorating, she was busy as a
bumble-bee. As the mistress of a big garden and a real kitchen she
invited all her Chicago friends to come and share her good fortune. She
was filled with the spirit of ownership and exulted over the four-acre
patch as if it were a noble estate in Surrey.

It chanced that Lorado on his way to St. Paul was able to stop off, and
Zulime not only cooked a special dinner for him, but proudly showed him
all about the garden, talking gaily of the number of jars of berries and
glasses of jelly she was planning to put up.

"Well, Zuhl," he said resignedly, "I suppose it's all for the best, but
I don't quite see the connection between your years of training in
sculpture and the business of canning fruit."

It was a perfect spring day, and the Homestead was at its best. The
entire demesne was without a weed, and the blooming berry patches, the
sprouting asparagus beds and the budding grape vines all come in for the
eminent sculptor's enforced inspection, until at last with a yawn of
unconcealed boredom he turned away. "You _seem_ to _like_ your slavery,"
he remarked to Zulime, a note of comical accusation in his voice.

On the station platform when about to say good-bye to me, he became
quite serious. "This marriage appears to be working out," he admitted,
musingly. "I confess I was a little in doubt about it at first, but Zuhl
seems to be satisfied with her choice and so--well, I've decided to let
matters drift. Whether she ever comes back to sculpture or not is
unimportant, so long as she is happy."

Knowing that Zulime had always been his intellectual comrade, and
realizing how deeply he felt the separation which her growing interest
in my affairs had brought about, I gave him my hand in silent renewal of
a friendship into which something new and deeply significant had come.
"I hope she will never regret it," was all I could say.

Zulime was not deceived as to my income. My property, up to this time,
consisted of a small, a very small library, a dozen Navajo rugs, several
paintings, a share in four acres of land