ent up and down an alley, dimly lighted by a
candle, between solid phalanxes of books.

"I pray you give good heed," he said, resuming. "I was always eccentric.
People thought I was either a genius or fool. Perhaps I was much of
both. But this is a digression. I did not pay any attention to women. I
shunned them. I said that to be a great author and a philosophical
thinker, one must not be a man of society. I never went to a
wood-chopping, to an apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a
barn-raising, nor indeed to any of our rustic feasts. I suppose this
piqued the vanity of the girls, and they set themselves to catch me. I
suppose they thought that I would be a trophy worth boasting. I have
noticed that hunters estimate game according to the difficulty of
getting it. But this is a digression. Let us return.

"There came among us, at that time, Abigail Norman. She was pretty. I
swear by all the sacred cats of Egypt, that she was beautiful. She was
industrious. The best housekeeper in the state! She was high-strung. I
liked her all the more for that. You see a man of imagination is apt to
fall in love with a tragedy queen. But this is a digression. Let
us return.

"She spread her toils in my path. While I was wandering through the
woods writing poetry to birds and squirrels, Abby Norman was ambitious
enough to hope to make me her slave, and she did. She read books that
she thought I liked. She planned in various ways to seem to like what I
liked, and yet she had sense enough to differ a little from me, and so
make herself the more interesting. I think a man of real intellect never
likes to have a man or woman agree with him entirely. But let us return.

"I loved Abigail desperately. No, I did not love Abigail Norman at all.
I did not love her as she was, but I loved her as she seemed to my
imagination to be. I think most lovers love an ideal that hovers in the
air a little above the real recipient of their love. And I think we men
of genius and imagination are apt to love something very different from
the real person, which is unfortunate.

"But I am digressing again. To return: I wrote poetry to Abby. I courted
her. I cut off my long hair for a woman, like Samson. I tried to dress
more decently, and made myself ridiculous no doubt, for a man can not
dress well unless he has a talent for it. And I never had a genius for
beau-knots.

"But pardon the digression. Let us return. I was to have married her.
The day was se