“Watch-dog, watch-dog, you have eyes in your head and none in your wits. You are a blind-wit, watch-dog, a blind-wit of no hope. And you would study Peg? Teach I never so lucidly, study thou never so long, yet shouldst thou never know Peg, but die in darkness of her.” Peg said this with a kind of murmur of regret. Then, collecting direction: “How many times has Peg been with you? And yet you have never seen her--never once seen Peg. You do not see Peg now while she stands at your shoulder. You are a blind-wit.” “If I have not seen Peg,” said I, “and if I do not now see Peg, then at the least my eyes have tasted visions above report.” “Now you speak well,” quoth Peg, with an archness of pretended approval. Here, surely, should be the old, true Peg. It was a delight to listen to the bantering yet soft tones of her, like walking in the May woods with their new green and the new blossoms painting the ground about one's feet. “What have I seen, then?” I asked, going back a pace. “What have you seen? A mirage, the mere mirage of Peg--her picture, sketched on the skies of your ideal.” Then in a playful manner of correction, as when a girl refuses a compliment: “You have looked upward, watchdog, when you should have looked down. And now for your first lesson. This is the text of it: Would you find a woman, keep your eyes on the ground.” For all Peg's humor of gaiety, I could tell how she was under greatest strain. Also, there ran an odd current of reproach throughout her words. It was as though she saw faults in me. “And now,” said I, seeking to focus complaint, “and now, what have I done or said to hurt?” Peg drew away from my shoulder. I could not see her face, but I felt her spirit changing from cool to hot in the furnace of some thought. There was silence for a moment. “What have you done to hurt?” cried Peg, suddenly, breaking into a wondrous wrath. “Oh, I could die with such a dullard! What have you done? What is this just-now complaint you conceive against my husband? He does not understand me, forsooth! You should consider yourself! What have you done to hurt? You place me too high! You put me out of reach! Oh, I know of no more dreadful fate than to be forever mistaken for an angel!” That last came like the cry of a heart in torture. The next moment Peg was gone and I left gasping. Of what avail to think? As she had said, I was a blundering blind-wit, and, by me at least, Peg would not be made out. I had declared how Eaton owned a footless fancy which could not raise itself to realize a goddess. And now, in my own high superiority, I had come bravely off! I had been properly paid as one who is churl enough to give a woman a compliment at the expense of her husband. Was I to suppose my goddess would accept flattery at the cost of her self-respect? The goddess from her furious pedestal had denounced me as one who planned for her dishonor.