s you think he'd find it dull without companions."

"He would paint all day in the Forest, dear. I'd like to pick his brains
a bit, too, if I could manage it."

"You can manage anything, David," was what she answered, for this
elderly childless couple used an affectionate politeness long since
deemed old-fashioned. The remark, however, displeased her, making her
feel uneasy, and she did not notice his rejoinder, smiling his pleasure
and content--"Except yourself and our bank account, my dear." This
passion of his for trees was of old a bone of contention, though very
mild contention. It frightened her. That was the truth. The Bible, her
Baedeker for earth and heaven, did not mention it. Her husband, while
humoring her, could never alter that instinctive dread she had. He
soothed, but never changed her. She liked the woods, perhaps as spots
for shade and picnics, but she could not, as he did, love them.

And after dinner, with a lamp beside the open window, he read aloud from
_ The Times_ the evening post had brought, such fragments as he thought
might interest her. The custom was invariable, except on Sundays, when,
to please his wife, he dozed over Tennyson or Farrar as their mood might
be. She knitted while he read, asked gentle questions, told him his
voice was a "lovely reading voice," and enjoyed the little discussions
that occasions prompted because he always let her with them with "Ah,
Sophia, I had never thought of it quite in _that_ way before; but now
you mention it I must say I think there's something in it...."

For David Bittacy was wise. It was long after marriage, during his
months of loneliness spent with trees and forests in India, his wife
waiting at home in the Bungalow, that his other, deeper side had
developed the strange passion that she could not understand. And after
one or two serious attempts to let her share it with him, he had given
up and learned to hide it from her. He learned, that is, to speak of it
only casually, for since she knew it was there, to keep silence
altogether would only increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmed
the surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think she
won the day. It remained a debatable land of compromise. He listened
with patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, knowing that
while it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thing
lay in him too deep and true for change. But, for peace' sake, some
meeting