At all events, it won't work in our case, and remember
that we never thought it would. We talked it all over, with no humbug
on either side--rather an unusual sort of talk, when one comes to think
of it. I liked you for the common-sense you showed, and I remember
patting myself on the back for a rational bit of behaviour at a time
when I felt rather crazy.'

Alma laughed in her gayest key.

'You were delicious. I didn't quite know what to make of you. And
perhaps that was the very reason----'

'Reason for what?' asked Harvey, when she broke off and looked not
quite so pale as a moment before.

'I forget what I was going to say. But please go on. It's very
interesting--as your talk always is.'

'I've said about all. You're not to be dutiful and commonplace; that's
the matter in a nutshell.'

'I don't think you can accuse me of ever being commonplace.'

'Perhaps not,' said Harvey.

'And as for dutiful, our duty is to be consistent, don't you think?'

'Yes--if by consistency you mean the steady resolve to make the most of
yourself. That's what you had in mind when you came here. As soon as
you begin to grow limp, it's time to ask what is the matter. I don't
offer any advice; you know yourself better than I can know you. It's
for you to tell me what goes on in your mind. What's the use of our
living together if you keep your most serious thoughts to yourself?'

Harvey Rolfe glowed with a sense of his own generous wisdom. He had
never felt so keen a self-approval. Indeed, that emotion seldom came to
solace him; for the most part he was the severest critic of his own
doings and sayings. But for once it appeared to him that he uttered
golden words, the ripe fruit of experience and reflection. That
personal unrest had anything to do with the counsel he offered to his
wife, he did not for the moment even suspect. Alma had touched him with
her unfamiliar note of simple womanhood, and all at once there was
revealed to him a peril of selfishness, from which he strongly
recoiled. He seemed to be much older, and Alma much more youthful, than
he was wont to perceive. Very gently and sweetly she had put him in
mind of this fact; it behoved him to consider it well, and act upon the
outcome of such reflection. Heavens! was he in danger of becoming the
typical husband--the man who, as he had put it, thinks first of his
pipe and slippers? From the outside, no man would more quickly or more
contemptuously have noted the common-s