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“Forgive me, George. I knew at first that you were trying to do me a good turn, but–but you were so persistent that you deceived us. I’m really glad there’s nothing in it.”

“Thanks awfully.” Then bending a sardonic glance on my friend, I murmured sententiously:

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is Winged Cupid painted blind.”

* * * * *

“Edna, why don’t you take a more active interest in these club gatherings?” asked Morgan Russell one afternoon eight years subsequent to their marriage. He had laid aside his work for the day, and having joined his wife on the piazza was glancing over a printed notice of a meeting which she had left on the table. “I’m inclined to think you would get considerable diversion from them, and the study work at home would be in your line.”

Edna was silent a moment. She bent her head over her work–a child’s blouse–that he might not notice that she was biting her lip, and she managed to impart a dispassionate and almost jaunty tone to the indictment which uttered.

“Every now and then, Morgan, you remind me of Edward Casaubon in ‘Middlemarch.’ Not often, but every now and then lately.”

“That selfish, fusty, undiscerning bookworm?”

“You’re not selfish and you’re not fusty; but you remind me of him when you make remarks like your first.” She brushed a caterpillar from her light summer skirt, and noticing the draggled edge held it up. “There’s one answer to your question about taking an active interest in clubs. There are twenty others, but this is one.”

Her husband appeared puzzled. He looked well, but pale and thin, as though accustomed to close application.

“I mean I can’t afford it,” she added.

“I see. Then it was stupid of me–Casaubonish, I dare say, to have spoken. I was only trying to put a little more variety into your life because I realized that you ought to have it.”

Edna gave a faint sigh by way of acquiescence. Marriage had changed her but little in appearance. She looked scarcely older, and her steady eyes, broad brow, and ready smile gave the same effect of determination and spirit, though she seemed more sober.

“I’m a little dull myself and that makes me captious,” she asserted. Then dropping her work and clasping her hands she looked up earnestly at him and said, “Don’t you see the impossibility of my being active in my club, Morgan? I go to it, of course, occasionally, so as not to drop out of things altogether, but in order to take a prominent part and get the real benefit of the meetings a woman needs time and money. Not so very much money, nor so very much time, but more of either than I have at my disposal. Of course, I would like, if we had more income–and what is much more essential–more time, to accept some of the invitations which I receive to express my ideas before the club, but it is out of the question. I have a horror of superficiality just as you have.”

“A sad fate; a poor man’s wife,” said Morgan with a smile which, though tranquil, was wan.

“And you warned me. Don’t think for a moment I’m complaining or regretting. I was only answering your question. Do you realize, dear, we shall have been married eight years day after to-morrow?”

“So we have, Edna. And what a blessing our marriage has been to me!”

“We have been very happy.” Then, she said, after a pause, as though she had been making up her mind to put the question, “You are really content, Morgan?”

“Content?” he echoed, “with you, Edna?”

“Not with me as me, but with us both together; with our progress, and with what we stand for as human beings?”