ose and intimate
association of husband and wife. The one relationship has something in
it immaterial, exquisite, and unearthly, a bond invisible and yet as
potent as the winds we cannot see and the melodies we only hear. The
other, with its profound appeals to mortality, its demands upon all that
is strongest in affection and eternal in courage, its irreparableness,
suffering, and constancy, might, indeed, have the grandeur of all human
tragedy, and the dignity of a holy state; but that it could ever be so
beautiful as the love which is a silent influence was to Robert then, at
least, an inconceivable idea. He felt upon him and around him, in his
flesh and in his spirit, in the air and in the whole world, the
all-enveloping shadow of remorse. The dormant possibilities of his own
fanatical nature rose up before him--pale, inarticulate fiercenesses
crushed so long, and now trembling eagerly under his breath at the
prospect of a little more liberty in loving. A suspicion that already he
loved perhaps too well and far too passionately thrilled through his
conscience, and tortured a heart to whom thought was a refuge and
feeling a martyrdom.

Reckage, watching Robert from a corner of the room, grew irritated at
the silence, and wondered, with a cruel and jealous curiosity, what was
passing in his mind. He wondered whether he was praying. An impulse,
which had something in it of brute fury, urged him to tear open that
still face and drag the thoughts behind it to the light. Why was it
that one could never, by any sense, enter into another's spirit?
The same torturing mystery had often disturbed him during the
half-hours--outwardly placid and commonplace--which he spent, out of
etiquette, with his future bride. She, too, retired behind the veil of
her countenance to live a hidden life that he could never hope to join.
How lonely was companionship in these conditions, and how desolate
marriage!

He could not resist the temptation to break in, with a touch of crude
satire, upon his friend's solitude.

"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, "are you hungry?"

"No," said Robert, so well accustomed to such violent jars that they
could no longer disturb him; "I was only thinking...."

"About what?"

"All sorts of things."

Reckage turned pale from dissatisfied inquisitiveness.

"I think, too," he answered, "but I can throw out a word now and again."

Then, making the remark that he was not dressed for dinner, he left the
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