"Well, Steve's above me, you know."

He nodded, but Nannie took no offense. He was thinking. "That's our
trouble. I'm above Lillie."

"And I must try to reach him somehow."

"If Lillie would do that----" he began, but Nannie cut him short.

"It's not Lillie, it's _you_! Lillie is above you!"

Again he caught his breath, this time with a gasp, but he was forced
to be silent. It would be a strange man indeed who could enter into an
argument to prove his wife inferior to himself. He might be thoroughly
convinced of this; might even have taken it for granted that others
realized the fact, but he could hardly have the face to bring his
voluminous arguments on this point to the attention of an outsider.

"I know what you're thinking," said Nannie, and she looked uncanny
again. "I can't say these things as well as some people could, but you
think because you know books you're better than Lillie. The books
can't be the first things, because there must always be men before
there can be books; and there must always be some real things, true
things, before there can be men. These were there first. The books
don't make them, but just refer to them, and the people that have the
real things are higher than the books. That's what makes Lillie higher
than you."

The man sat thinking for a few moments, then he tried to laugh.

"Really, Nannie," he said, "if one were ill with that horrid disease
called Conceit, a quiet half hour with you on the deck of a boat would
restore him to health."

Nannie gazed at him defiantly, but said nothing.

"No, I'll tell you, little one, how it all came about," he said rather
patronizingly. "Lillie and I married when we were boy and girl. She
was seventeen and I was twenty. Lillie was very pretty and that
attracted me, and I--well, I don't know just what she saw in me!"

"I've often wondered," said Nannie.

He gave one look of blank amazement and then dropped his hands in
dismay.

"Well, I suppose you were more interesting then than you are now,"
Nannie went on comfortingly.

"I hope so," he said humbly, "but we neither of us knew the other.
Our tastes were not formed; our characters were not matured. I grew
one way, she grew another; now we care for entirely different things,
and as a result we are walking through life together and each is
utterly alone."

He was looking off over the big lake now. He had forgotten the
annoyances and unpleasant surprises of their conversation. He no
lo