“You find something and read it to me. I like to hear your voice, even if I can’t keep my mind on it. Wait a while though. I guess I’ll go and see how the stable is getting on.” He bent down to kiss his wife, but she was once more absorbed, and did not see him. He snatched the book from her with an oath and flung it across the room. She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes, pushed him aside with no gentle hand, and ran after the book. “You sha’n’t read that book!” he cried. “The idea of forgetting your husband for a book—_a book_! You are a lovely wife! You are a disgrace to the name! You would rather read than kiss your husband! I’ll lock this room up, damned if I don’t.” “I’ll go and live with Miss Beale and do Temperance work,” sobbed Patience. “I won’t live with you.” “Oh, you won’t—what? What did I marry you for? My God! What did I marry you for? My life is hell, for I’m no fool. I know you don’t love me. You married me for my money.” “I wish I had,” she exclaimed passionately, then controlled herself. “I hope we are not going to squabble in the usual commonplace way. I shall not, at any rate. If you lose your temper, you can have the quarrel all to yourself. I shall not pay any attention to you. Now go out to the stable and cool off, and when you come back I’ll read something else to you.” “Do you love me?” “Oh, yes—yes.” And Beverly disappeared, slamming the door behind him. “I wonder if any one on earth has such a temper,” she thought. “And people believe that vulgarity and lack of control are confined to the lower classes! What is the matter with civilisation anyhow? I can only explain my own remarkable aberration in this way: youthful love is a compound of curiosity, a surplus of vitality, and inherited sentimentalism. It is likely to arrive just after the gamut of children’s diseases has run its course. Of course the disease is merely a complacent state of the system until the germ arrives, which same is the first attractive and masterful man. All diseases run their course, however. I could not be more insensible to Beverly Peele’s dead ancestors out in the vault than I am to him. No woman is capable of loving at nineteen. She is nothing but an overgrown child, a chaos of emotions and imagination. There ought to be a law passed that no woman could marry until she was twenty-eight. Then, perhaps a few of us would feel less like—Well, there is nothing to do but make the best of it, regard life as a highly seasoned comedy, in which one is little more than a spectator, after all—and at present I have Heine.” Beverly did not return for an hour. When he did she rose at once, and running her eye along the shelves, selected a volume of Webster’s Speeches. “You like politics,” she said; “and all of us should read the great works of our great men. I’ll read the famous Seventh of March Speech.” And she did, Beverly listening with considerable attention. When she had finished he remarked enthusiastically,—