es help to give? Can we ever learn
that we love and are loved entirely as we give ourselves colors which
may harmonize with those about us? That love, wins love; kindness,
kindness; hate, hate. That just such elements as we give to the
individual, the individual gives back to us? That the sides we show are
the sides seen by the world. There were people who could truly believe
that Peter was a ward boss; a frequenter of saloons; a drunkard; a liar;
a swearer; a murderer, in intention, if not in act; a profligate; and a
compromiser of many of his own strongest principles. Yet there were
people who could, say other things of him.

But more important than the opinion of Peter's friends, and of the
world, was the opinion of Peter's wife. Was she right in her theory that
she was the only one who understood him? Or had she, as he had once
done, reared an ideal, and given that ideal the love which she supposed
she was giving Peter? It is always a problem in love to say whether we
love people most for the qualities they actually possess, or for those
with which our own love endows them. Here was a young girl,
inexperienced in world and men, joyfully sinking her own life in that of
a man whom, but a few months before, had been only a matter of hearsay
to her. Yet she had apparently taken him, as women will, for better, for
worse, till death, as trustfully as if he and men generally were as
knowable as A B C, instead of as unknown as the algebraic X. Only once
had she faltered in her trust of him, and then but for a moment. How far
had her love, and the sight of Peter's misery, led her blindly to renew
that trust? And would it hold? She had seen how little people thought of
that scurrilous article, and how the decent papers had passed it over
without a word. But she had also seen, the scandal harped upon by
partisans and noted that Peter failed to vindicate himself publicly, or
vouchsafe an explanation to her. Had she taken Peter with trust or
doubt, knowledge or blindness?

Perhaps a conversation between the two, a week later, will answer these
questions. It occurred on the deck of a vessel. Yet this parting glimpse
of Peter is very different from that which introduced him. The vessel is
not drifting helplessly, but its great screw is whirling it towards the
island of Martinique, as if itself anxious to reach that fairy land of
fairy lands. Though the middle of November, the soft warmth of the
tropics is in the air. Nor are the