he sun shone upon. He wanted her
because she reminded him of birds, and flowers, and summer winds,
and other exquisite things created for the delectation of mankind. He
neither expected nor desired her to think. He had half-frightened her
into marrying him, had taken her to a poor man's home, provided her with
no society such as she had been accustomed to, and he had no reasonable
cause of complaint when she answered the call of summer and flitted
away, like a butterfly in the morning sunshine, to the place where the
flowers grew.

He wrote to her every evening, sitting in the stifling, ugly house, and
poured out his soul as if it were a libation to a goddess. She sometimes
answered by telegraph, sometimes by a perfumed note. He schooled himself
not to feel hurt. Why should Babette write? Does a goldfinch indict
epistles; or a humming-bird study composition; or a glancing, red-scaled
fish in summer shallows consider the meaning of words?

He knew at the beginning what Babette was--guessed her
limitations--trembled when he buttoned her tiny glove--kissed her dainty
slipper when he found it in the closet after she was gone--thrilled at
the sound of her laugh, or the memory of it! That was all. A mere case
of love. He was in bonds. Babette was not. Therefore he was in the
city, working overhours to pay for Babette's pretty follies down at the
seaside. It was quite right and proper. He was a grub in the furrow;
she a lark in the blue. Those had always been and always must be their
relative positions.

Having attained a mood of philosophic calm, in which he was prepared to
spend his evenings alone--as became a grub--and to await with
dignified patience the return of his wife, it was in the nature of an
inconsistency that he should have walked the floor of the dull little
drawing-room like a lion in cage. It did not seem in keeping with
the position of superior serenity which he had assumed, that, reading
Babette's notes, he should have raged with jealousy, or that, in the
loneliness of his unkempt chamber, he should have stretched out arms of
longing. Even if Babette had been present, she would only have smiled
her gay little smile and coquetted with him. She could not understand.
He had known, of course, from the first moment, that she could not
understand! And so, why the ache, ache, ache of the heart! Or WAS it the
heart, or the brain, or the soul?

Sometimes, when the evenings were so hot that he could not endure the