He had a fair income now--twenty dollars a week--and he lived very well, having a room in a good house, and taking his meals down town. This was a condition of life which had always commended itself to his imagination, and he revelled now in realising it. Of course he saved no money. Through Ansdell and others he had made the acquaintance of a number of Tecumseh men of position, and he had been asked a little to their houses, but he had not gone more than once. This single experience did not dismay or humiliate him; he flattered himself that he came out of it with credit. But it did not interest him; it was wofully difficult to talk to the women he met--to know what to say to them. It was the easier to come back from this one excursion to his old Bohemian bachelor notions, and justify them to himself. The correspondence with Isabel had not been altogether so attractive as he had anticipated. It had its extremely pleasant side, of course, but there were drawbacks. She wrote well, but then most of her writing was about herself, which grew wearisome after a time. It was difficult too, to find time to answer her letters always when the philandering mood was upon him, and in this matter he found himself curiously the creature of his moods. The routine of daily newspaper toil had rendered him largely independent of them in his ordinary work. He wrote about as well one day as another. But there were seasons when he could not write to Isabel at all. Then he would say to himself that the need of doing so was a nuisance, and in this frame of mind he would generally end by reproaching himself for even entertaining the idea of a mild flirtation with his brother’s wife. Not that there was anything wrong in it, of course; he was quite clear on this point; but it was so useless, such a gratuitous outlay of time and talent! But then next day, perhaps, a good dinner, or a chance glimpse of fresh romance in the exchanges, or some affecting play at the theatre of an evening, would bring back all the glamour of her pretty, tender face, the magic of her eyes, the perfume of her tawny hair. And then he could write, and did write, often with a force of sweet rhetoric, a moving quality of caressing ardor, which it is difficult to distinguish from love making. To him these letters did not mean that at all; they were really abstract reflections of the sentimental side of his nature, which might have been evoked by almost any likable, intelligent woman. But to the wife on the farm they seemed deeply, deliciously, personal. CHAPTER XVIII.--BOLTING THE TICKET. It was the year of a great political revival--coming none too soon.