wer of it,
she would have been astonished. Since that Christmas afternoon when she
had undertaken to follow Mr. Peterson's advice and line Yim Irwin up, Jim
had gone through an inward transformation. He had passed from a late,
cold, backward sexual spring, into a warm June of the spirit, in which he
had walked amid roses and lilies with Jennie. He was in love with her. He
knew how insane it was, how much less than nothing had taken place in his
circumstances to justify the hope that he could ever emerge from the state
in which she would not say "Humph!" at the thought that he could marry her
or any one else. Yet, he had made up his mind that he would marry Jennie
Woodruff .... She ought never have tried to line him up. She knew not what
she did.

He saw her through clouds of rose and pink; but she looked at him as at a
foolish man who was making trouble for her, chasing rainbows at her
expense, and deeply vexing her. She was in a cold official frame of mind.

"Jim," said she, "do you know that you are facing trouble?"

"Trouble," said Jim, "is the natural condition of a man in my state of
mind. But it is going to be a delicious sort of tribulation."

"I don't know what you mean," she replied in perfect honesty.

"Then I don't know what you mean," replied Jim.

"Jim," she said pleadingly, "I want you to give up this sort of teaching.
Can't you see it's all wrong?"

"No," answered Jim, in much the manner of a man who has been stabbed by
his sweetheart. "I can't see that it's wrong. It's the only sort I can do.
What do you see wrong in it?"

"Oh, I can see some very wonderful things in it," said Jennie, "but it
can't be done in the Woodruff District. It may be correct in theory, but
it won't work in practise."

"Jennie," said he, "when a thing won't work, it isn't correct in theory."

"Well, then, Jim," said she, "why do you keep on with it?"

"It works," said Jim. "Anything that's correct in theory will work. If the
theory seems correct, and yet won't work, it's because something is wrong
in an unsuspected way with the theory. But my theory is correct, and it
works."

"But the district is against it."

"Who are the district?"

"The school board are against it."

"The school board elected me after listening to an explanation of my
theories as to the new sort of rural school in which I believe. I assume
that they commissioned me to carry out my ideas."

"Oh, Jim!" cried Jennie. "That's sophistry! They all