"It's a pity, isn't it, that you both have to wait so long?" He imagines he sees light, and blunders ahead like an honest man. "I wouldn't have sent those things back now if I had thought you cared. By Jove, it never entered my head that you'd be jealous!" "Jealous?" She is on her feet like a red white flash. "I, jealous of her?" Each word is emphasized. "I couldn't be jealous of her, _Nur die Dummen sind bescheiden_! Why, the girl isn't fit to tie my shoe-strings!" This is too much; he feels he must protest. "You don't know her," feebly. "She is an awfully nice girl!" "Nice girl! I don't doubt it; and she will be an awfully nice woman, and under each and every circumstance of life she will behave like an awfully nice person. Jealous! Do you think I cried because I was jealous? Good God, no! I cried because I was sorry, fearfully sorry, for myself. She"--with a fine thin contempt--"would have suited you better than I. Jealous! no, only sorry. Sorry because any nice average girl of her type, who would model her frocks out of the 'Lady's Pictorial,' gush over that dear Mr. Irving, paint milking-stools, try poker-work, or any other fashionable fad, would have done you just as well. And I"--with a catch of voice--"with a great man might have made a great woman; and now those who know and understand me [bitterly] think of me as a great failure." She finishes wearily; the fire dies out of eyes and voice. She adds half aloud, as if to herself,-- "I don't think I quite realized this until I saw how you took that letter. I was watching your face as you read it; and the fact that you could put her on the same level, that if it had not been for a mistake she would have suited you as well, made me realize, don't you see? that I would have done some one else better!" He is looking at her in utter bewilderment, and she smiles as she notes his expression; she touches his cheek gently, and leans her head against his arm. "There it's all right, boy! Don't mind me. I have a bit of a complex nature; you couldn't understand me if you tried to, and better not try!" She has slipped, while speaking, her warm bare foot out of her slipper, and is rubbing it gently over his chilled ones. "You are cold, better go back to bed; I shall go too!" She stands a moment quietly as he turns to obey, and then takes the frame, and kneeling down puts it gently into the hollowed red heart of the fire. It crackles crisply, and little tongues of flame shoot up; and she gets into bed by their light. * * * * * When the fire has burnt out, and he is sleeping like a child with his curly head on her breast, she falls asleep too, and dreams that she is sitting on a fiery globe rolling away into space; that her head is wedged in a huge frame, the top of her head touches its top, the sides its sides, and it keeps growing larger and larger, and her head with it, until she seems to be sitting inside her own head, and the inside is one vast hollow.