life to do his pleasure!--he to have the girl he had honored by making his
wife, a little brown woman, plain and almost _passe_ (he was man enough
not to care for her poverty), show she cared no more for his love than he
did for hers I--was as indifferent to him as he to her! Indifference from
a woman was a new experience to him, and annoyed him.

Yet her quaint, frank letter touched him. What did she mean by dying soon
and letting him be free again? Poor little midge! was she dying of a
broken heart because a treacherous woman had fooled her out of a part of
her life? Poor little robin! she was his wife now, and he could heal the
worst heartache in any woman's breast. He had tried that thing before, and
succeeded, even if he broke the heart afterward. Die, indeed! Not if he
knew it: even Death should not have a little woman he meant to be good to.

And as he remembered all her faithfulness to him during these weary weeks
of pain, he thought, "By Jove! beauty's not all, for no woman, had her
face been like that of Phryne of Thebes, or her charms as entrancing as
the bewitching Dudu's, could have been more lovely in her kindness to me.
How brave and strong she has been! What a faithful little soul it is!
Always ready, day and night, to do just what I want done and in the way I
want it, never knocking things about or fidgeting round, but just
ready-handed, neat and bright. God knows, a handsome woman wouldn't have
risked the spoiling her beauty by all these weary, sleepless nights,
especially for a man she did not love." And then to think she was actually
willing to work and slave for him, and support him out of her share of the
booty, and let him fool away his own on other women! "Wonder what the
little dame means to buy her own fine things with, for even robins must
get clothing? I'll ask her that. Bless the little woman's soul! she makes
me think of her so much that I believe I'm half in love with her. Um!" and
he stopped: "I'm getting sentimental and poetic, I swear! But if it were
in me to love anything that was not beautiful, I believe I could love this
little girl, who has come into my life so strangely. She owns up to having
loved, and is done with all the stale farce. Some fools," and he felt very
indignant, "slighted her because she had no beauty, though, upon my soul,
now I think of it, I'm not so certain about that. There's a something in
her face takes a man's breath--something that one would rather die than