ormy, November eye, a wealth
of loose, brownish-black hair combed upward from the temples, with one
lock straggling Napoleonically down toward the eyes; cheeks that had
almost a babyish tint to them; lips much too rich, red, and sensuous; a
nose that was fine and large and full, but only faintly aquiline; and
eyebrows and mustache that somehow seemed to flare quite like his
errant and foolish soul. He had been sent away from Denmark
(Copenhagen) because he had been a never-do-well up to twenty-five and
because he was constantly falling in love with women who would not have
anything to do with him. Here in Chicago as a teacher, with his small
pension of forty dollars a month sent him by his mother, he had gained
a few pupils, and by practising a kind of erratic economy, which kept
him well dressed or hungry by turns, he had managed to make an
interesting showing and pull himself through. He was only twenty-eight
at the time he met Rita Greenough, of Wichita, Kansas, and at the time
they met Cowperwood Harold was thirty-four and she twenty-seven.

She had been a student at the Chicago Fine Arts School, and at various
student affairs had encountered Harold when he seemed to play divinely,
and when life was all romance and art. Given the spring, the sunshine
on the lake, white sails of ships, a few walks and talks on pensive
afternoons when the city swam in a golden haze, and the thing was done.
There was a sudden Saturday afternoon marriage, a runaway day to
Milwaukee, a return to the studio now to be fitted out for two, and
then kisses, kisses, kisses until love was satisfied or eased.

But life cannot exist on that diet alone, and so by degrees the
difficulties had begun to manifest themselves. Fortunately, the latter
were not allied with sharp financial want. Rita was not poor. Her
father conducted a small but profitable grain elevator at Wichita, and,
after her sudden marriage, decided to continue her allowance, though
this whole idea of art and music in its upper reaches was to him a
strange, far-off, uncertain thing. A thin, meticulous, genial person
interested in small trade opportunities, and exactly suited to the
rather sparse social life of Wichita, he found Harold as curious as a
bomb, and preferred to handle him gingerly. Gradually, however, being
a very human if simple person, he came to be very proud of it--boasted
in Wichita of Rita and her artist husband, invited them home to astound
the neighbors