t last, she
exclaimed:

"Upon my word, I believe you have fallen in love with master."

"You might have said: I am still in love. That is why I return to his
side."

"If you tell him that is the reason," said this speaker, who used much
Teutonic frankness to her superiors, "you will astonish him more than
you did me by popping in this morning. He will not believe you."

Madame Clemenceau smiled as those women do who can warp men round to
their way of thinking.

"But he will! Besides, if it is a difficult task, so much the
better--when a deed is impossible, it tempts one."

"Well, as far as I can see, madame, that is an odd idea for you to have
had when far away from master."

"Pish! did you never hear the saying that 'Absence makes the heart grow
fonder?' Oh, girl, I had so much deep meditation as I stared at the dim
night-light," and she shuddered and looked a little pale.

"Well, madame, I should have rolled over and shut my eyes," said the
matter-of-fact maid.

There was more truth in the lady's speech than her hearer gave her
credit for. She was no exception to the rule that the wives of great
inventors almost never properly appreciate them. By the light of his
success, breaking forth like the sun, she feared that the greatest error
of her life had been made when she miscomprehended him. In her dreams as
well as her insomnia, it was Clemenceau that she beheld, and not the
gallants who had flashed across her uneven path, not even the viscount,
whose spoil was her nest-egg. Alas! it was a mere atom to the solid
ingot which her misunderstood husband's genius had ensured. She had
perhaps lost the substance in snapping at the shadow.

"Any way, I love my husband," she proceeded, moaning aloud, and resting
her chin in the hollow of her hand--the elbow on the table, to which she
had returned and where she was seated. "I am sure now."

"No doubt," said the servant, unconsciously holding the feather duster
as a soldier holds his rifle; "madame has heard about our great
discoveries in artillery? They are revo--revolutionizing--oof! What a
mouthful--the military world!"

"Yes; I read the newspaper accounts during my convalescence," replied
Madame Clemenceau.

"Then you fell in love with your husband because of his cannon," said
Hedwig, laughing. "I do not see what connection there is between them,
and, in fact," reflecting a little and suddenly laughing more loudly, "I
hear that cannons produce breaches rather