xplain," replied he. "Don't bother about the
mistakes of yesterday. Remember them--yes. If one has a good memory, to
forget is impossible--not to say unwise. But there ought to be no more
heat or sting in the memory of past mistakes than in the memory of last
year's mosquito bites."

The first course of the supper arrived. Her nervousness vanished, and he
got far away from the neighborhood of the subjects that, even in
remotest hint, could not but agitate her. And as the food and the wine
asserted their pacific and beatific sway, she and he steadily moved into
better and better humor with each other. Her beauty grew until it had
him thinking that never, not in the most spiritual feminine conceptions
of the classic painters, had he seen a loveliness more ethereal. Her
skin was so exquisite, the coloring of her hair and eyes and of her lips
was so delicately fine that it gave her the fragility of things
bordering upon the supernal--of rare exotics, of sunset and moonbeam
effects. No, he had been under no spell of illusion as to her beauty. It
was a reality--the more fascinating because it waxed and waned not with
regularity of period but capriciously.

He began to look round furtively, to see what effect this wife of his
was producing on others. These last few months, through prudence as much
as through pride, he had been cultivating the habit of ignoring his
surroundings; he would not invite cold salutations or obvious avoidance
of speaking. He now discovered many of his former associates--and his
vanity dilated as he noted how intensely they were interested in his
wife.

Some men of ability have that purest form of egotism which makes one
profoundly content with himself, genuinely indifferent to the approval
or the disapproval of others. Norman's vanity had a certain amount of
alloy. He genuinely disdained his fellow-men--their timidity, their
hypocrisy, their servility, their limited range of ideas. He was
indifferent to the verge of insensibility as to their adverse criticism.
But at the same time it was necessary to his happiness that he get from
them evidences of their admiration and envy. With that amusing hypocrisy
which tinges all human nature, he concealed from himself the
satisfaction, the joy even, he got out of the showy side of his
position. And no feature of his infatuation for Dorothy surprised him so
much as the way it rode rough shod and reckless over his snobbishness.

With the fading of infatuation