The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1932-01-29
&c by Mcclure Newspaper Syndicate.l
tWNU ServIca)

HERE are certain things so
closely enmeshed within the
complicated pattern and fiber of
the human heart, that to even
Try 10 explain the more subtle and
terrifying of human motives and emo
tiOns were worse than useless. So
felt Howard Bennett as he sat forward
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
circumstances.
Ernest, sometimes trying to analyze
his sickness. and it amounted to that,
felt differently.
If, perchance. he had married
woman with whom he had been less
passiOnately, less deyastatingly in
love than he had been with Elaine
since the hour he laid eyes on her,
ii al would have been different.
How could one, he argued to him
self in the bitter reaches of many
sleepless night. find ones mere travel
ing salesman of self married to the
frailest, whitest, most lily-like crea-
ture imaginable, and not fairly burn.
as smelling furnace burns, with the
Jealous terror of losing her.
The fact that this lily of a girl, this
almost naively adoring, patient and
COnfiding wife of his harbOred neither
a straying eye nor a straying fancy,
did not serve TO mitigate the chronic
torture that befell the Iuckless youth.
as more and more the precious truth
of her desirability impressed itself up
on him during the first few years of
their alliance.
To add TO anguish, his role of trav-
cling salesman took him from home
four. six and eight weeks at a time
and it was borne in upon Bennett, dur
ing 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 a wholesale shoe
firm and set about the pertlouS task
of finding position that did not take
him from the home. After three
months of one serious case of mal-
adjustment after another. il was a
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.
After that. realizing that his fears
and suspicious amounted to insanity.
and that his ceaseless Jealous carpings
We're wearing down even the sweet
and gentle resistance of his wife. there
as a pronounced Improvement in the
manner and attitude of Bennett. He
no longer reprOached her for the
slightest wandering of her glance if
they happened to be walking together
on the street: ceased dropping in
from his trips. one. two and three
days before be had announced himself
due. and for a while ii 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 its prey, there crept
back into the heart of Bennett. while
travelling the old terrors and sus-
picions concerning his wife.
She was so fair. She was so infinite
" desirable She was so over and
above any qualities that existed in
any woman he had ever known. Nat
urally. men would covet her. Why
not? She was something TO be covet-
ed. She was something worth covet
ing! And last. all her goodness and
sweet patience 20 the contrary not
withstanding. she was only human
And so there overshadowed the
household. torment and fear and all
the ugly anguish that follows in the
wake of jealousy.
With her lovely blue eyes that had
already cried more than their share,
imploring sanity of her husband, it
sometimes seemed to him. holding her
closely after one of his tantrums over
a trihing nothing and imploring 70 he
forgiven. that the only way out of his
dilemma Of fear concerning this dar-
ling Of his lifetime was death. Death
for them both. Then he could be
sure only then.
There were so many possibilities
for losing her. He was away at least
six months of his year. Before her
marriage Elaine had been courted and
sought more than any girl in her SET
God knows. he used to ask of himself.
why she chose him. Il must have
been his alteration his mad
binding alteration, that drew her.
There had been many a heart ache