cried. 'You have understood. We will be two
human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'

"As you may suppose, everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears
came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you
understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my
fiancA(C)e had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear
little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her
house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I
said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of
ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell you
the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other woman
did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my fiancA(C)e
close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so affected
at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had they known
the truth about me God only knows!

"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the
other woman at all. That is partially true but sometimes in the evening
when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are walking
now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come to-night,
the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After that one
meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married and I have
never gone back into her street. Often however as I am walking along as
I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes possession of me. It
is as though I were a seed in the ground and the warm rains of the
spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but a tree.

"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage
is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is
not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute
truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind
of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why
I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I am
not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your
understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a
little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman.
That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife
sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There