Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-31

pattern and fiber of the human
heart that to even try to explain
the more subtle and terrifying of
human motives and emotions were worse than
useless So felt Howard Bennett as he sat for
ward on his chair with the steel-looking beads
of sweat hanging from his brow.
Who knows? Perhaps he should never have
married. Perhaps that streak in his nature.
destined to spoil his happiness from the first
week of it. might have developed under any
circums tances.
Earnest, sometimes trying TO analyze his sick
ness and it amounted to that, he felt differ
emily.
If perchance he had married a woman with
whom he had been less passionately, less de-
vastatfngiy in love than he had been with
Elaine since the hour he laid eyes on her, 1t
all would have been different.
How could one, he argued to himself in the
bitter reaches of many a sleepless night, find
ones mere travelling salesman of self married
to the frailest, whitest most lily-like creature
imaginable and not fairly burn, smelling
furnace burns with the jealous terror of losing
her
The fact that this lily of a girl, this almost
naively adnring, patient and confding wife of
his, harbOred neither q Straying eye
straying fancy did not serve to mitigate the
chronic torture that befell the luckless youth,
as more and more the precious truth Of her
desirability impressed itself upon him during
the first few years of their alliance
To add 10 anguish his role of travelling
salesman took him from home four, six and
eight weeks at time, and it was borne in
upon Bennett during these same few years that
his equipment fitted him for practically no
other kind of work Once, indeed he went so
far as to resign his nine-year position with
wholesale shoe Arm and set about the perilous
task Of finding n position that did not take
him from the home After three months of
one serious case of maladjustment after an
other. it was chastened young husband who
sought and obtained the old position, which
owing to secret and utterly unjustified pangs
Of jealousy over his wife, he had resigned
A FTER that. realizing that his fears and
suspicious amounted to insanity and that
his ceaselcss jealous earnings were wearing
down even the sweet and gentle resistance of
his WIFE there was a pronounced Improvement
In the manner and attitude Of Bennett. He no
longer repToached her for the slightest wander
ing of her glance If they happened to be walk
ing together on the street; ceased dropping in
from his trips one. two and three days before
ne had announced himself cue. and for q while
it seemed to the luckless Elaine that now, at
last, she had got her marriage on some kind
of an even keel.
But slowly, surely, like a beast creeping up on
it's prey. there crept back into the heart of
Bennet while travelling the old terrorS and
Slspi MS concerning his wife.
She was so fair. She was so infinitely de-
srab'n. SHE was so over and above any quail
ties that existed in any woman he had ever
krown. Naturally. men would covet her. why
me-? She was something TO be coveted. She
w1s something worth coveting And last all
her goodness and sweet patience to the con-
tt ~ nGtw thstanding. she was only human.
AMI there overshadowed the household
tg3nc1t ard fear and all the ugly anguish that
fCT7v ~ the wake Of jealousy.
~ IN hrr lovely blue eyes that had already
O. ~rc than their share, imphoring sanity
OF h"- husband. 1t sometimes seemed to him.
b il y her closely after one Of hts tantrums