u do not comprehend. You should have blended your
life with that of some such creature as this, and you would have
developed a new faculty. Now I close my eyes. Ask me anything about
her--I don't mean about her dress, but about her head or hands, all you
can see of the real woman."

I accepted the challenge, and there was great sport, and a little-great
result. I made the inquest a most searching and minute affair. I
asked him to tell me if there were any mark upon the neck, near one
ear, and he described the precise locality and outline of a tiny brown
fleck, no larger than a pin's head. He told of any little dimple, of
any sweep of the downward growth of the brown hair, of any trifling
scar from childhood. And of her chin and neck he told the very
markings, in a way that was something wonderful. His eyes were closed,
and his face was turned away from us, but this made no difference. He
described to me even the character of the wonderful network in the
palms of her little hands. Then he opened his eyes and turned to me,
chaffingly:

"You see how ignorant is a man of your sort. Having no world worth
speaking of, he knows nothing of geography."

I do not believe that even Jean herself knew, before, of how even the
physical being of her had been impressed upon the heart and brain of
this man. She listened curiously and wonderingly when, he was talking
with his eyes closed, and when he opened them and began his nonsense
with me she stood looking at him silently, then suddenly left the room.
It was a way of Jean's to flee to her own room for a little season when
something touched her, and I imagine this was one of the occasions.
She had known for long years how two souls could become knitted and
interwoven into one, but I do not believe that before this incident she
had ever comprehended how her physical self, as well, had become an
ever present picture upon the mind's retina of her lover and her
husband.

I am worried, and bothered. I am a man past middle age. I shall never
marry now, and shall but drift into a time of doing some little, I
hope, toward making things easier for some other men and some women,
and then--into a crematory. I have a fancy that my body, this machine
of flesh and muscle in which I live, should not be boxed and buried in
seeping earth to become a foul thing. That was an idea I learned from
this firm friend of mine. I want it burned, and all of it, save the
little urn full of w