Gibson used to say that he would never marry, because no other woman could be half as nice as his own mother. Then, of course, he broke his mother\'s heart by marrying a woman who was not nice at all.

He was a powerful fellow with a plain, square face, and a manner that was perfection to the people whom he liked. Unfortunately they were very few. He did not like any of the ladies whom his mother wanted him to like, not even when they reproduced for him her gentle, delicate distinction.

The younger Mrs. Gibson had none of it. But she had ways with her, and a power that was said to reside supremely in her hands, her arms, and her hair. Especially her hair (she was the large white and golden kind). It was long as a lasso and ample as a cloak. Gibson loved her hair. The sight and the scent of it filled him with folly. He liked to braid and unbraid it, to lay his face against it, to plunge his hands through the coolness into the warmth of it.

It seemed to him to give out the splendor and vitality of her, to have a secret sympathy with the thought that stirred beneath it.

She had a trick, when she was thinking of caressing it, of winding and unwinding the little curls that sprang, aureolewise, above her temples. That was one [Pg 60] of her ways, and it brought her hands and arms into play with stupendous effect.

He would sit opposite her a whole evening, watching it, dumb with excess of happiness.

It took him six months to find out that the trick he admired so much was a sign that his wife was bored to extinction.

"Is there anything you want?" he said.

She laughed hysterically.

"You\'ve only to say what you want, and I\'ll get it for you, if it can be got."

"It could be got all right," said she. "But I doubt whether you\'d care very much to get it."

"What is it? Tell me—tell me."

"Well—you\'re very nice, my dear, I know. But before I married you I used—though you mightn\'t think it—to be received in society."

He took her back to it. He said he was a selfish brute to want to keep her to himself. That speech amused Mrs. Gibson immensely. She had a curious and capricious sense of humor. It made her very adaptable and tided them both over a sharp season of infelicity.

Hitherto Mrs. Gibson had been merely bored. Now she was seized with a malady of unrest. Any other man but Gibson would have been driven mad with her nerves.

"You\'re doing too much, you know," he said, soothing her. "You\'re tired."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, no," she said, "not tired."

He meditated.

"What you want," said he, "is a thorough change."

"My dear," said she, "I didn\'t know you were so clever." [Pg 61]

"Would you like me to take a cottage in the country?"

"A cottage? In the country?"

"Well, of course, not too far from town. Some place where I could run down for the week-ends."

"You couldn\'t," said she, "be running down oftener?"

"No," he said, "I\'m afraid I couldn\'t just at present."

"Don\'t you think it might be a trifle lonely?"

"You can have anyone you like to stay with you."

She smiled.

"And you really want to take it? This cottage?"

"Yes."

"Well, then,"............