, 'Oh, very well, then!' and before she was
aware of it, the door would have banged. By the time William had reached
the gate he would be half-way through with a deed of assignment in favour
of his wife, who, now that he had really gone, would watch him covertly
from the window with slowly thawing heart.

So the devils would begin their dance: for it was by no means ended. Of
course, William would come home as usual; and yet, though the sound of his
footstep was the one sound she had listened for all day, Dora would
immediately begin to petrify again, and when he would approach her with
open arms, asking her to forgive and forget the morning, she would demur
just long enough to set him alight again. Heaven, how the devils would
dance then! And the night would usually end with them lying sleepless in
distant beds.

II

To attempt tragedy out of such absurd material is, you will say, merely
stupid. Well, I'm sorry. I know no other way to make it save life's own,
and I know that the tragedy of William's life hung upon a silly little
ink-stained 'J' pen. I would pretend that it was made of much more
grandiose material if I could. But the facts are as I shall tell you. And
surely if you fulfil that definition of man which describes him as a
reflective being, if you ever think on life at all, you must have noticed
how even the great tragedies that go in purple in the great poets all turn
on things no less trifling in themselves, all come of people pretending to
care for some bauble more than they really do.

And you must have wondered, too, as you stood awestruck before the regal
magnificence, the radiant power, the unearthly beauty, of those glorious
and terrible angels of passion--that splendid creature of wrath, that
sorrow wonderful as a starlit sky--you must have wondered that life has
not given these noble elementals material worthier of their fiery
operation than the paltry concerns of humanity; just as you may have
wondered too, that so god-like a thing as fire should find nothing
worthier of its divine fury than the ugly accumulations of man.

At any rate, I know that all the sorrow that saddens, sanctifies, and
sometimes terrifies my friend, centres round that silly little 'J' pen.
The difference is that the angels dance on its point now, instead of the
devils; but it is too late.

A night of unhappiness had ended once more as I described. The long
darkness had slowly passed, and morning, sunny with forgiven