"The only reason that Loulou and I married each other," went on Loulou's husband, "is that we loved each other; and we love each other now, if possible, twice as much as we did then. If you think she does not care for me because she is not demonstrative in company, you are mistaken. She gives me as much proof of it as I want. We all have our peculiarities, and I know I have a great many which she puts up with better than most women would. Of course I don't expect her to be without hers either; but they don't trouble me any more than mine do her, and, besides, most of what has struck you as singular in her behaviour can be easily explained. You have thought she was conceited about her music, but it's no such thing; she has not an atom of conceit in her; indeed, she thinks too humbly of herself. She has heard so much music of the highest class that she thinks little of any drawing-room performance, her own or anybody else's, and her reluctance to sing is genuine, for she has a horror of being urged or complimented out of mere politeness. You are not pleased, I hear" [_how_ could he know that?], "that she refused to join all your clubs and classes; one reason was that she really did not care to. Every one has a right to one's own taste; she has met a great deal of artistic and literary society abroad, and has become accustomed to live among people who are doing something; and it is tedious to her to go about so much with people who are always talking about things, as we are given to do here. She is really fond of hard reading, as but few women are; and she likes better, for instance, to stay at home and spend her time in reading Dante by herself in the original, than to go to a club and hear him talked over, with a little skimming from a translation interspersed. She dresses to please me and herself, and not to be envied or admired; and if she has a fondness for pretty clothes for their own sake, that is not surprising, when she had so little chance to indulge it when she was a girl." Here he paused, and it was high time, for we were growing restive under the catalogue of his wife's virtues; but in a moment he resumed.