lation, "you touch
one's pride."

"Certainly I do. You're willing enough to say that you love her and long
for her, but not that your moral manhood needs her. And yet isn't it
true?"

"It sha'n't be true," said Richling, swinging a playful fist.
"'Forewarned is forearmed;' I'll not allow it. I'm man enough for that."
He laughed, with a touch of pique.

"Richling,"--the Doctor laid a finger against his companion's shoulder,
preparing at the same time to leave him,--"don't be misled. A man who
doesn't need a wife isn't fit to have one."

"Why, Doctor," replied Richling, with sincere amiability, "you're the
man of all men I should have picked out to prove the contrary."

"No, Richling, no. I wasn't fit, and God took her."

In accordance with Dr. Sevier's request Richling essayed to lift the
mind of the baker's wife, in the matter of her husband's affliction, to
that plane of conviction where facts, and not feelings, should become
her motive; and when he had talked until his head reeled, as though
he had been blowing a fire, and she would not blaze for all his
blowing--would be governed only by a stupid sentimentality; and when
at length she suddenly flashed up in silly anger and accused him of
interested motives; and when he had demanded instant retraction or
release from her employment; and when she humbly and affectionately
apologized, and was still as deep as ever in hopeless, clinging
sentimentalisms, repeating the dictums of her simple and ignorant German
neighbors and intimates, and calling them in to argue with him, the
feeling that the Doctor's exhortation had for the moment driven away
came back with more force than ever, and he could only turn again to
his ovens and account-books with a feeling of annihilation.

"Where am I? What am I?" Silence was the only answer. The separation
that had once been so sharp a pain had ceased to cut, and was bearing
down upon him now with that dull, grinding weight that does the damage
in us.

Presently came another development: the lack of money, that did no harm
while it was merely kept in the mind, settled down upon the heart.

"It may be a bad thing to love, but it's a good thing to have," he said,
one day, to the little rector, as this friend stood by him at a corner
of the high desk where Richling was posting his ledger.

"But not to seek," said the rector.

Richling posted an item and shook his head doubtingly.

"That depends, I should say, on how much one se