ably to see, for the
hundredth time, how coarse of fibre Rube is compared to Jerome.

She resents the unpalatable fact. She resents something else, and
makes a very vigorous but unavailing effort to gain her freedom.

"I cannot understand," playfully remonstrated Rube, and with arms
immovable, "why so simple a matter disturbs you so much. You are as
white as a sheet, you are quivering like a leaf, your hands are icy
cold, and what is it all about?"

"I told you never, _never_ to do that!" cried out Mell, in an agony of
passionate protest.

Even the most cold-blooded among mortals finds the caress of a person
not dear to them offensive; but take the woman of emotional nature,
exquisitely sensitive in all matters of feeling, and to such the touch
of unloved lips is worse than a plague spot.

"Don't you hear me? I cannot bear it! I am not used to it!"

There was something more than maidenly coyness in her tone; there was
mental anguish, and a downright shade of anger. We wonder Rube did not
detect it. But you know, gentle reader, how it is. There are so many
things all around and about us which we do not hear and see, because
we are intent upon other matters, and are not looking for them. With
such feelings, in that dreadful moment Mell would rather have
submitted to a dozen stripes from Jerome, than one single caress from
Rube--her future husband, bear you in mind! the being by whose side
she expected to pass the rest of her days. Poor Mell! If getting up in
the world requires self-torture, self-immolation such as this,
wouldn't it be better, think you, not to get up? Wouldn't it be
better, in the long run, for every woman, situated as you are, to use
a dagger, and thereby not only settle her future, but get clean out of
a world where such sufferings are necessary? There can't be any other
world much worse, judged by your present sensations.

But Rube, as we have said, did not hear that piteous wail of a woman
coercing her flesh and blood, the frame of her mind, the bent of her
soul. She was his own, and no words could tell, how he loved her. If a
man cannot lawfully kiss his own wife, or one so near to being his own
wife, it is a hard case, truly. That one little slip "'twixt the cup
and the lip," which has played such havoc in men's expectations, from
the first beginnings of time to the present moment, did not enter into
Rube's calculations, or his thoughts.

He was in a playful and a loving mood. He tightened