“But that’s different, Donald,” she observed seriously. “How?” “Why, you treated me so strangely that, inevitably, I didn’t know what you were like; and though you interested me very much, and though your journal brought back my old love for you, still, what I did was more in pity and admiration and reparation than—and so I could fall deeper in love. While you, being so much in love already, and with such a totally different woman”— “Only went from bad to worse,” I groaned. “Yes, I own up. My sin is one of the lowest man can commit. I have fallen in love with a married woman. And the strange thing about it is that you are not jealous of her! Indeed, I really believe that you are magnanimous enough to love her too, though it’s natural you should not like her as much as you do some others. But next August I’ll leave her and go to India to study for my new book.” “The married woman will go too,” she predicted calmly. “I shouldn’t dare risk her among those hill tribes.” “And she won’t risk you where it isn’t safe for her to go.” “I was only thinking of your lovely complexion,” I explained. “Old mahogany is very fashionable,” she laughed. “Can nothing make you stay at home?” I asked beseechingly. “I wonder if there ever was a husband who did not love to tease his wife?” “The divorce courts have records of many such unloving wretches.” “What I want,” she told me, returning to her wish, “is to have you take it up just where you left off. Tell about your pneumonia, and how Mrs. Blodgett found your journal, but didn’t dare give it to me till the doctor was certain you would recover; and then tell of my sending you flowers and jellies and everything I could think of, by her, to help you get well. How”— “I should have eaten twice as much and recovered much more quickly if she had only let me know from whom they really came,” I interjected in an aggrieved tone. “And tell how I wouldn’t listen to that scoundrel till you should have a chance to justify yourself; how, the moment I had read your diary, I wrote and rejected him, and would not see him when he called; how he would not accept his dismissal, but followed me to the country; tell how dreadfully in the way he was that evening, till Mrs. Blodgett and Agnes and I trapped him into a game of whist”— “You Machiavellis!” “Tell all about my confession, and how we all spoiled you for those months at My Fancy. Oh, weren’t they lovely, Donald?” “I thought so then.” “But not now?” “A gooseberry is good till you taste a strawberry. There was a good deal too much gooseberry, as I remember.” “Then tell how the papers and people chattered about your assuming your true name; and how they gabbled when we were married,—and how, on our wedding day, we endowed the hospital ward”— “Haven’t you made a slip in the pronoun?” “I’ll box your ears if you even suggest it again; half of the money was what you earned—endowed the hospital ward in memory of _our_ dear father, and how happy we’ve been since.”