ou know
what followed. She was finer clay than she had fancied. Love is woman's
kingdom, not the world. Even then I thought more of her than of myself.
I could have borne my share of the burden had I not seen her fainting
under hers, shamed, degraded. So we dared to think for ourselves,
injuring nobody but ourselves, played the man and woman, lost the world
for love. Wasn't it brave, Paul? Were we not hero and heroine? They had
printed the playbill wrong, Paul, that was all. I was really the hero,
but the printing devil had made a slip, so instead of applauding you
booed. How could you know, any of you? It was not your fault."

"But that was not the end," I reminded him. "If the curtain had fallen
then, I could have forgiven you."

He grinned. "That fatal last act. Even yours don't always come right, so
the critics tell me."

The grin faded from his face. "We may never see each other again, Paul,"
he went on; "don't think too badly of me. I found I had made a second
mistake--or thought I had. She was no happier with me after a time than
she had been with him. If all our longings were one, life would be easy;
but they are not. What is to be done but toss for it? And if it come
down head we wish it had been tail, and if tail we think of what we have
lost through its not coming down head. Love is no more the whole of a
woman's life than it is of a man's. He did not apply for a divorce: that
was smart of him. We were shunned, ignored. To some women it might not
have mattered; but she had been used to being sought, courted, feted.
She made no complaint--did worse: made desperate effort to appear
cheerful, to pretend that our humdrum life was not boring her to death.
I watched her growing more listless, more depressed; grew angry with
her, angrier with myself. There was no bond between us except our
passion; that was real enough--'grand,' I believe, is the approved
literary adjective. It is good enough for what nature intended it, a
summer season in a cave. It makes but a poor marriage settlement in
these more complicated days. We fell to mutual recriminations, vulgar
scenes. Ah, most of us look better at a little distance from one
another. The sordid, contemptible side of life became important to us. I
was never rich; by contrast with all that she had known, miserably poor.
The mere sight of the food our twelve-pound-a-year cook put upon the
table would take away her appetite. Love does not change the palate,
give you a t