He was in love with her, of course. Falling in love was one of the most facile of feats to Rhodes, and falling out was about as easy. Heretofore, dancers and comic-opera singers had been the most frequent objects of his worn-out affections, and the present contrast to all this had undoubtedly something piquant in it. After a few months, however, the prosaic demands of the monotonous home life in the little suburban roost, where his friends never came, grew very wearing, particularly as his wife was delicate, and indisposed to join him in his trips to the theatres and concert-halls, which had become a confirmed habit of his life. She did not wish to confine him at home, however, and she insisted that he should go without her, so that gradually he found himself slipping back into his bachelor ways. It was very welcome to Rhodes about this time to have any means of drowning care, for he was badgered about debts and expenses, finding it more than he could do to keep going even that poor establishment. He had a desultory occupation as an insurance agent, by which he picked up a little money now and then; but younger and more industrious men were fast pushing him aside, and his income diminished as his expenses increased. It was, therefore, even to his consciousness, just as well that his young wife died. It would perhaps have been better if the baby had died with her, and he could so have buried out of sight all reminder of that strange and incongruous episode in his life. But the baby, a tiny girl, did not die. She struggled through teething, and whooping cough, and measles, and many other such attacks, in the midst of neglect, cold, heat, hunger, and pain, and lived on, growing into an almost preternaturally serious, wise, and thoughtful child. There is a theory of which this father and child might be taken as striking examples. It is to the effect that every created soul has the same period of human life to compass, and that it exists, in successive human incarnations, until that period is accomplished. Sometimes, but an hour or a minute may be needed to make up the exact sum, but the re-incarnation must necessarily be, even if for no longer a time than that. This theory, we are told, accounts for the phenomena of youth in age, and age in youth, which we so often see; in other words, it explains why a very aged person is often silly and childish, and a young child wise and matured in mind. When this occurs (so the theory goes) the old person is in his or her first incarnation--is, in fact, a young soul--while the child may be in his or her last incarnation, an old soul almost ready to be liberated from humanity and admitted to the higher life.