about her, and yet I was prepared to fight in the
assurance that she possessed every virtue and every grace of character
which I have since proved in her. This is the folly of love; but it is
at the same time that which makes it so beautiful. Most young men, and
most young women, live to be disillusioned. But I fell in love with
better fortune, if with no more discretion, than the average man
displays, and after many years of trial and happiness I know my wife to
be a better woman than I had power to guess all those years ago. And I
know, as every husband of a good wife knows, that I was a much better
man than I could ever have been without her influence.

All this leads me away from what I meant to say, which was simply that
Miss Rossano's wordless reception of Brunow made me furiously jealous of
him, and altogether dashed my happiness. She had spoken to me--_ergo_,
she could speak. She had not spoken to him--_ergo_, the emotion of
encountering him was too great for her. We had been six years married
when I told her of this.

I saw her with both hands reached out to help her father into the
carriage. I saw her beautiful face, so soft and serious and lofty in its
look that I have no words to say how it touched me. The carriage drove
away. Hinge shouldered our bit of luggage easily, and Brunow and I
walked up to the hotel side by side. We were met in the hall by a waiter
who asked us if we would go to Lady Rollinson's sitting-room in half an
hour, and then Brunow and I went to a private room of our own, and drank
each a pint of English ale, as every Englishman did on reaching the
Lord Warden in those days. It was a libation to liberty, the health of
welcome home which the loneliest traveller poured when he felt himself
upon his native land again after an absence however temporary.

When we had got through this ceremony we sat glum and silent enough,
and I have since thought it likely that Brunow was as much hurt at the
difference in our greetings as I had been. For Miss Rossano had thanked
me in words and had not spoken to him, and he was probably reading the
thing the other way about. But he was much more at home within himself
than I was, and at any time I don't think he was capable of any very
deep feeling. Perhaps I do him less than justice, and we are all apt to
think our sensations more striking and real than those of other people.

At the appointed time we went out into the corridor and walked to the
room which