pretext for escape in her own room she sank for a moment under a rush of self disgust but it soon before the forces of her nature leaving only a of pity for the poor creature whose secret she had surprised she had never before suspected of taking a nor did she now suppose that he did so habitually but to see him even under such an influence explained her instinctive sense of his weakness she felt now that what would have been an insult on other lips was only a cry of distress from his and once more she blamed herself and forgave him but if she had been inclined to any of self reproach she would have been saved from it by other cares for the moment she was more concerned with s fate than with her own � her poor friend seemed to have so much more at stake and so much less strength to bring to the defence of her happiness was always saved from any excess of self compassion by the sense within herself of forces of growth and self renewal as though from every a fresh shoot of energy must spring but she felt that had no such sources of and that every disappointment left an arid spot in her soul even without her friend s confidences would have had no difficulty in following the successive stages of the inner history she knew that had resigned his rule at the fruit of the tree and that his wife in return for the sacrifice was to to the way of life she thought he preferred and the of both attempts was more visible to than to either of the two concerned she saw that the failure of the marriage lay not in any accident of outward circumstances but in the lack of all natural points of contact as she put it to they met neither nor overhead practical necessities united them no more than imaginative joys there were moments when thought hard to as she suspected that he had once been hard to his mother � as the leader of men must perhaps always be hard to the sex yet she did justice to his efforts to accept the and to in his wife some capacity for sharing in his minor interests since she had none of her own with which to fill their days had always been a reader not like herself a flame like of the page but a slow of its essence and in the early days of his marriage he had fancied it would be easy to make share this taste though his mother was not a woman he had breathed at her side an air rich in allusion and filled with the bright of romance and he had rs regarded this commerce of the imagination as one of the normal conditions of hfe the discovery that there were no books at save a few sets imprisoned behind the brass of the library had been one of the many surprises of his new state but in his first months with there was no room for books and if he thought lo the fruit of the tree of the matter it was only in a glancing vision of future evenings when he and she in the calm of happiness should lean together over some cherished page her lack of response to any reference outside the small circle of daily facts had long since that vision but now that his own mind felt the need of inner he began to ask himself whether he might not have done more to rouse her imagination during the long evenings over the library fire he tried to lead the talk to books with a now and again from the page beneath his eye and met the experiment with eagerness she showed in especial a hopeful but preference for poetry leaning back with dreaming and lovely parted lips while he rolled out the immortal measures but her outward signs of attention never into any expression of opinion or any after allusion to what she heard and before long he discovered that was his only listener it was to her that the words he read began to be unconsciously addressed her comments directed him in his choice of subjects and the restored him to some semblance of mental activity true to her new ro e of acquiescence shone silently on this of ideas even detected in her a vague admiration for his power of conversing on subjects which she regarded as and this approval combined with her submission to his will him with a sense of recovered power over her he could not but note that the new phase in their relations had with his first assertion of and he concluded that with the removal the of the tree of the influences tending to separate them his wife might gradually be won back to her earlier sympathy with his views to accept this theory was to apply it for nothing could long divert from his main purpose and all the strength of his will was only gathering to itself fresh stores of energy he had never been a skilful lover for no woman had as yet stirred in him those feelings which call the finer into play and there was no instinct to tell him that s sudden to his wishes was as as her surrender to his first kiss he fancied that he and she were at length reaching some semblance of that moral harmony which should grow out of the accord and that poor and as the understanding was it must lift and strengthen their relation he waited till early winter had brought solitude to l the hunting colony to various points of the compass and sending mr to egypt and the while mrs as usual took up her annual tour of a social circuit whose extreme points were marked by boston and � and then 