There was something in the whole attitude of Clara, and especially in the evidence of emotions long repressed, that filled not only the husband, but the physician, with alarm and self-reproach, and he did what all men do when unusually conscious that they are murdering by inches the women who love them. He took her in his arms, covered her with kisses, wept over her, called himself unworthy of a love so divinely tender as hers, and when in some sentence Clara alluded to Ella, he begged she would not mention the name of any other woman to him. What were all the women in the world to him? He had been a brute to even seem to put any other woman before her, or to do anything to cause her the slightest pain. Clara nestled close to his heart, and sobbed herself into a blissful state of trust and hope, as Albert went on. He would never pay any marked attention to Ella since it displeased Clara. Clara, too happy in being restored to her husband’s confidence, answered generously, and through happy tears: “No, dear one, you must not make her unhappy by an inexplicable change of manner. Do you not think she is really in love with you?” “There is no doubt of that,” he said, with a touch of vanity, for he was but human, and to see this woman, who had caused him so many “pangs of despised love,” now wholly and helplessly enamored of him, was a triumph bearing in it a poetic justice, a healing sweetness, impossible to resist. He had not desired that any one should occupy his heart but his wife; for theirs had been a love worth preserving in its freshness. He really desired so to preserve it; and therefore he would have been consistent if, upon the first signs of Ella’s passion for him, he had shown her something of his devotion to his wife. It might not have been gallant, according to the creed of men, but it would at least have been profoundly wise. Women instinctively yield to any securely enthroned rival; perhaps men know this, and hence they so rarely show one woman that they love any object specially, or even act in a manner that will let such fact pass for granted. This is generally true of men in whose temper there is a latent melancholy. They are passionately attracted to their opposites, to those who are gay and happy, and therefore they would fly from suffering, even when they themselves are the cause of it. Clara found in the bliss caused by Albert’s spasmodic return to his old tenderness, an adequate compensation for deferring her visit to Oakdale. She expressed earnestly the wish to please Albert in all things. “My darling,” he said, “you can please me always if you will remain in this sweet mood. Only be happy, and there will be no more clouds.”