and finds out that people don't know what is in their houses at
all--there are rooms into which they never go; and then one finds that
they don't even see the things in their own rooms, have forgotten how
they came there, wouldn't know if they were taken away. My, I used to
feel as if the scents and smells of houses were all arranged and chosen
by their owners. It's like that with you; all the things you know and
remember, the words you speak, are not YOU at all; I see and feel you
now apart from all that."

"I am afraid I have lost what novelists call my glamour," said Howard.
"You have found me out, the poor, shivering, timid thing that sits like
a wizard in the middle of his properties, only hoping that the stuffed
crocodile and the skeleton will frighten his visitors."

Maud laughed. "Well, I am not frightened any more," she said. "I doubt
if you could frighten me if you tried. I wonder how I should feel if I
saw you angry or chilly. Are you ever angry, I wonder?"

"I think some of my pupils would say that I could be very
disagreeable," said Howard. "I don't think that I was ever very fierce,
but I have realised that I was on occasions very unpleasant."

"Well, I'll wait and see," said Maud; "but what I was going to say was
that you seem to me different--hardly the person I married. I used to
wonder a little at first how I had had the impudence . . . and then I
used to think that perhaps some day you would wake up, and find you had
come to the bottom of the well, but you never seemed disappointed."

"Disappointed!" said Howard; "what terrible rubbish! Why Maud, don't
you KNOW what you have done for me? You have put the whole thing
straight. It's just that. I was full of vanities and thoughts and bits
of knowledge, and I really think I thought them important--they ARE
important too, like food and drink--one must have them--at least men
must--but they don't matter; at least it doesn't matter what they are.
Men have always to be making and doing things--business, money,
positions, duties; but the point is to know that they are unimportant,
and yet to go on doing them as if they mattered--one must do
that--seriously and not solemnly; but you have somehow put all that in
the right place; and I know now what matters and what does not. There,
do you call that nothing?"

"Perhaps we have found it out together," said Maud; "the only
difference is that you have the courage to tell me that you were wrong,
while I have ne