oods, _my_ days of ailing and depression, but ah, I
depend upon my husband's. He has his days of ailing and depression,
but I never know of them until they are past. He has his illnesses,
but he conceals them from me. If things go wrong, his face only grows
brighter for my eyes to rest upon, nor is he ever too busy or too
preoccupied to stop his work and soothe my nervous fears. Disagreeable
people are not allowed to annoy me. Disagreeable letters are held over
until their sting has grown less. Disagreeable remarks are robbed of
their venom by his kindly interpretation. He stands as a bulwark
between me and the world.

"And so they were married, and lived happily ever after."

To live happily means for one or the other to ignore self. Aubrey is
the epitome of selflessness. So that I claim no credit for the
noiseless wheels of our domestic machinery, for over trifles I am
inclined to go up in a puff of vapour and blue smoke, and I love my own
way.

But somehow, after a year or two of seeing Aubrey give his way up to
mine, without a frown or a word of remonstrance, and with such a look
of unfathomable love in his wonderful eyes, I rather lost the taste for
demanding my own way. Even when I got it some of its flavour had
disappeared. Was I contrary? I do not know. I only knew that I began
to pretend--I had to pretend, or Aubrey would not have allowed it--to
want the things that he wanted, and to want them done in the way he
liked. And with such a rich reward! Do all sacrifices made for love
carry with them such immediate and rich rewards, I wonder? Can I ever
forget the Angel's face when it dawned upon him that I was giving up my
way for his? He realized it first as he was standing in front of me,
filling his pipe. I saw it come first into his eyes, then tremble upon
his sensitive lips, then he threw aside his precious pipe and knelt
down beside my chair, and gathered me all up in his arms, and hid his
face in my shoulder. What he said I shall never tell to any one, but I
shall remember it in my grave, and it will be surging in my ears in the
other world. Is sacrifice hard for one you love?

"And so they were married, and lived happily ever after."

That, in the old-fashioned story, was the end of everything. Married
love evidently took no hold upon the youthful imagination, or upon that
of our little selves. We wanted all the anguish to come to the unwed,
and the happiness and dulness of unchang