And they went, and looked at everything all over again, reviving the delight that had gone to the furnishing of that innocent interior. She cried out with joy over the cheap art serges, the brown-paper backgrounds, the blue-and-gray drugget, the oak chairs with their rush bottoms, the Borne-Jones photogravures, the "Hope" and the "Love Leading Life," and the "Love Triumphant." Their home would be the home of a material poverty, but to Aggie's mind it was also a shrine whose austere beauty sheltered the priceless spiritual ideal. Their wedded ardor flamed when he showed her for the tenth time his wonderful contrivance for multiplying bookshelves, as their treasures accumulated year by year. They spoke with confidence of a day when the shelves would reach from floor to ceiling, to meet the inevitable expansion of the intellectual life. They went out that very evening to a lecture on "Appearance and Reality," an inspiring lecture. They lived in it again (sitting over their cocoa in the tiny dining-room), each kindling the other with the same sacred flame. She gazed with adoration at his thin, flushed face, as, illumined by the lecture, he developed with excitement his theory of life. [Illustration: "Over their cocoa he developed his theory of life"] "Only think," he said, "how people wreck their lives just because they don't know the difference between appearance and reality! Now we do know. We're poor; but we don't care a rap, because we know, you and I, that that doesn't matter. It's the immaterial that matters." Spiritually he flamed. "I wouldn't change with my boss, though he's got five thousand a year. He's a slave--a slave to his carriage and horses, a slave to his house, a slave to the office--" "So are you. You work hard enough." "I work harder than he does. But I keep myself detached." "Some more cocoa, dearie?" "Rather. Yes, three lumps, please. Just think what we can get out of life, you and I, with our tiny income. We get what we put into it--and that's something literally priceless, and we mustn't let it go. Whatever happens we must stick to it." "Nothing can take it away from us," said Aggie, rapt in her dream. "No; no outside thing can. But, Aggie--we can take it from each other, if we let ourselves get slack. Whatever we do," he said, solemnly, "we mustn't get slack. We must keep it up." "Yes," said Aggie, "we must keep it up." They had pledged themselves to that. IV