year of wedded life is experimental, though it be with the
pair best mated since the world began. There is an unconscious
dropping of all surface traits and all disguises, and a showing of
heart and brain to the one other. Never lived the woman so
self-contained and tactful that, at the end of a year, her husband, if
he were a man of ordinary intelligence, did not know her for what she
was worth; never the man so thoughtful and discreet that he was not
estimated at his value by the one so near him. This I have been told
by men and women who should know. I lack the trial which should give
wisdom to myself, but I am inclined to accept the dictum of these
others. It must be so, from force of circumstances.

It was pleasant to me to watch this man and woman. It seemed to me
that the hard lines in Grant Harlson's face became, week by week and
month by month, less harshly and clearly defined, while upon the face
of his wife grew that new look of a content and ownership which marks
the woman who sleeps in some man's arms, the one who owns her--the same
look which Grant, with his broader experience and keener insight, used
to recognize when he puzzled me so in telling whimsically, in the
street cars, who were wedded, without looking at their rings. It may
have been a fancy, but it seemed to me the two grew very much to look
alike. It was in no feature, in nothing I can describe, but in
something beyond words, in a certain way which cannot be defined. It
may have been but the unconscious imitation by each of some trick of
the other's speech, or manner, but it appeared a deeper thing. I
cannot explain it.

They were not much apart, those two. Sometimes Harlson would be called
away by some business or political emergency, and then would occur what
impressed me as a silly thing, deeply as I cared, for each. He would
get railroad tickets for two, and they would go riotously across the
country, playing at keeping house in a state-room, and enjoying
themselves beyond all reason. I explained often to each of them that
it wasn't fair to the other; that he could attend to business better in
some distant city without having to report to her at a hotel, and that
it would be more comfortable for her in her own fair home; and the two
idiots would but laugh at me.

The library was their fad together, for Jean was as much of a
bibliomaniac, almost, as was her husband, and I confess I enjoyed
myself amid the rich collection, ma