downy--soft like you, Dolly. Look at them gleam.
And they move, Dolly, they move! Dolly, oh, look!"

The wings were gently breathing; their slender tips struck his waist at
each oscillation. The movement quickened, became a beat, a rapid
palpitation. A soft whirring sound filled the room; the newspaper on the
bed, dislodged, eddied to the floor; the wings were a mere white blur.
Suddenly Charles-Norton's feet left the floor, and he rose slowly into
the air. "Look, look, Dolly," he cried, as he went up, hovering above
her up-tilted nose and her wide eyes, as she sat there, paralyzed, upon
the ground; "Dolly, look!"

The humming sound took a higher note; a picture crashed down; the room
was a small cyclone. "Dolly, watch me; look!"

And with a sudden leap, Charles-Norton slanted up toward the ceiling and
lit, seated, on the edge of the shelf that went along the four walls.
"Look," he said with triumph, balancing smilingly on his perch.

But immediately his expression changed to one of concern, and he sprang
down quickly and quietly. Dolly was now stretched full-length along the
carpet; her face was in her arms. He turned it to the light. Her eyes
were closed.

Dolly had fainted.

CHAPTER VI

A husband who has a wife that faints is in the grasp of the great It.

Full of fear, pity, remorse, and self-hatred, Charles-Norton danced about
helplessly for several minutes, sprinkling water upon Dolly's brow (much
of it went down her neck); trying to pour bad whiskey between her pearly
teeth; calling himself names; chafing her hands, promising to be good, to
do always what she wanted; loosening her garments; proclaiming the fact
that he was a brute, she an angel--while the wings, loose down his back,
flapped after him in long, mournful gestures. And when finally, from the
couch upon which he had drawn her, Dolly opened upon him her blue eyes,
humid as twin stars at dawn, he placed her little scissors in her hand,
and with head bowed low, in an ecstatic agony of self-renunciation bade
her do her duty. The little scissors could not do it this time, though.
It took the shears.

After which there were a mingling of tears, murmurings, embraces, and
Dolly said that the bad, bad times were all over now, and he agreed that
they could never come again; and she said they would be happy ever
afterward, and he agreed they should be happy always. Then Dolly, still a
bit languid, in a voice still a bit doleful, drove him off t