ical want of energy and
intellect. He would have to touch her interest anew if, indeed, he
would ever succeed in dispelling the old impression. His beauty, in a
community of picturesquely handsome men, had little weight with her,
except to accent the contrast with their fuller manhood.

Her life had given her no illusions in regard to the other sex. She had
found them, however, more congenial and safer companions than women, and
more accessible to her own sense of justice and honor. In return, they
had respected and admired rather than loved her, in spite of her womanly
graces. If she had at times contemplated eventual marriage, it was only
as a possible practical partnership in her business; but as she lived in
a country where men thought it dishonorable and a proof of incompetency
to rise by their wives' superior fortune, she had been free from that
kind of mercenary persecution, even from men who might have worshiped
her in hopeless and silent honor.

For this reason, there was nothing in the situation that suggested
a single compromising speculation in the minds of the neighbors, or
disturbed her own tranquillity. There seemed to be nothing in the future
except a possible relief to her curiosity. Some day the unfortunate
man's reason would be restored, and he would tell his simple history.
Perhaps he might explain what was in his mind when he turned to her
the first evening with that singular sentence which had often recurred
strangely to her, she knew not why. It did not strike her until later
that it was because it had been the solitary indication of an energy and
capacity that seemed unlike him. Nevertheless, after that explanation,
she would have been quite willing to have shaken hands with him and
parted.

And yet--for there was an unexpressed remainder in her thought--she
was never entirely free or uninfluenced in his presence. The flickering
vacancy of his sad eyes sometimes became fixed with a resolute
immobility under the gentle questioning with which she had sought to
draw out his faculties, that both piqued and exasperated her. He could
say "Yes" and "No," as she thought intelligently, but he could not utter
a coherent sentence nor write a word, except like a child in imitation
of his copy. She taught him to repeat after her the names of the
inanimate objects in the room, then the names of the doctor, his
attendant, the servant, and, finally, her own under her Christian
prenomen, with frontier familiar