e has done some shopping, the last regret will leave her, and
her memory of that clerk will begin to fade fast. I'll give her too much
else to think about."

* * * * *

The following morning, when they faced each other at breakfast in their
sitting room, he glanced at her from time to time in wonder and terror.
She looked not merely insignificant, but positively homely. Her skin had
a sickly pallor; her hair seemed to be of many different and
disagreeable shades of uninteresting dead yellow. Her eyes suggested
faded blue china dishes, with colorless lashes and reddened edges of the
lids. Her lips had lost their rosy freshness, her teeth their sparkling
whiteness.

His heavy heart seemed to be resting nauseously upon the pit of his
stomach. Was his infatuation sheer delusion, with no basis of charm in
her at all? Was she, indeed, nothing but this unattractive, faded little
commonplaceness?--a poor specimen of an inferior order of working girl?
What an awakening! And she was his _wife_!--was his companion for the yet
more brilliant career he had resolved and was planning! He must
introduce her everywhere, must see the not to be concealed amazement in
the faces of his acquaintances, must feel the cruel covert laughter and
jeering at his weak folly! Was there ever in history or romance a
parallel to such fatuity as his? Why, people would be right in thinking
him a sham, a mere bluffer at the high and strong qualities he was
reputed to have.

Had Norman been, in fact, the man of ice and iron the compulsions of a
career under the social system made him seem, the homely girl opposite
him that morning would speedily have had something to think about other
than her unhappiness of the woman who has given her person to one man
and her heart to another. Instead, the few words he addressed to her
were all gentleness and forbearance. Stronger than his chagrin was his
pity for her--the poor, unconscious victim of his mad hallucination.
If she thought about the matter at all, she assumed that he was still
the slave of her charms--for, the florid enthusiasm of man's passion
inevitably deludes the woman into fancying it objective instead of
wholly subjective; and, only the rare very wise woman, after much
experience, learns to be suspicious of the validity of her own charms
and to concentrate upon keeping up the man's delusions.

At last he rose and kissed her on the brow and let his hand rest gently