t guess the hardest part: for the letter ended as it began,
with sudden talk of his inner life, and tentative inquiry after mine. In
its entirety, as I say, I have never shown it to a soul; there was just
a little more that I read to my wife (who could not hear enough about
his); then I folded up the letter, and even she has never seen the
passages to which I allude.

And yet I am not one of those who hold that the previous romances
of married people should be taboo between them in after life. On the
contrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may be
derived from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and this is
why we, in our old age (or rather in mine), find a still unfailing topic
in the story of which Eva Denison was wayward heroine and Frank Rattray
the nearest approach to a hero. Sometimes these reminiscences lead to
an argument; for it has been the fate of my life to become attached to
argumentative persons. I suppose because I myself hate arguing. On
the day that I received Rattray's letter we had one of our warmest
discussions. I could repeat every word of it after forty years.

"A good man does not necessarily make a good husband," I innocently
remarked.

"Why do you say that?" asked my wife, who never would let a
generalization pass unchallenged.

"I was thinking of Rattray," said I. "The most tolerant of judges could
scarcely have described him as a good man five years ago. Yet I can see
that he has made an admirable husband. On the whole, and if you can't be
both, it is better to be the good husband!"

It was this point that we debated with so much ardor. My wife would take
the opposite side; that is her one grave fault. And I must introduce
personalities; that, of course, is among the least of mine. I compared
myself with Rattray, as a husband, and (with some sincerity) to my own
disparagement. I pointed out that he was an infinitely more fascinating
creature, which was no hard saying, for that epithet at least I have
never earned. And yet it was the word to sting my wife.

"Fascinating, perhaps!" said she. "Yes, that is the very word;
but--fascination is not love!"

And then I went to her, and stroked her hair (for she had hung her head
in deep distress), and kissed the tears from her eyes. And I swore that
her eyes were as lovely as Eva Denison's, that there seemed even more
gold in her glossy brown hair, that she was even younger to look at. And
at the last and craftiest c