After the storm. And they were reconciled. The clouds rolled back;

the sun came out again with his radiant smiles and genial warmth.

But was nothing broken? nothing lost? Did each flower in the garden

of love lift its head as bravely as before? In every storm of

passion something is lost. Anger is a blind fury, who tramples

ruthlessly on tenderest and holiest things. Alas for the ruin that

waits upon her footsteps!

The day that followed this night of reconciliation had many hours of

sober introversion of thought for both Emerson and his wife; hours

in which memory reproduced language, conduct and sentiments that

could not be dwelt upon without painful misgivings for the future.

They understood each other too well to make light account of things

said and done, even in anger.

In going over, as Irene did many times, the language used by her

husband on the night before, touching their relation as man and

wife, and his prerogative, she felt the old spirit of revolt

arising. She tried to let her thought fall into his rational

presentation of the question involving precedence, and even said to

herself that he was right; but pride was strong, and kept lifting

itself in her mind. She saw, most clearly, the hardest aspect of the

case. It was, in her view, command and obedience. And she knew that

submission was, for her, impossible.

On the part of Emerson, the day's sober thought left his mind in no

more hopeful condition than that of his wife. The pain suffered in

consequence of her temporary flight from home, though lessened by

her return, had not subsided. A portion of confidence in her was

lost. He felt that he had no guarantee for the future; that at any

moment, in the heat of passion, she might leave him again. He

remembered, too distinctly, her words on the night before, when he

tried to make her comprehend his view of the relation between man

and wife--"That will not suit me, Hartley." And he felt that she was

in earnest; that she would resist every effort he might make to lead

and control as a man in certain things, just as she had done from

the beginning.

In matrimonial quarrels you cannot kiss and make up again, as

children do, forgetting all the stormy past in the sunshiny present.

And this was painfully clear to both Hartley and Irene, as she,

alone in her chamber, and he, alone in his office, pondered, on that

day of reconciliation, the past and the future. Yet each resolved to

be more forbearing and less exacting; to be emulous of concession,

rather than exaction; to let love, uniting with reason, hold pride

and self-will in close submission.




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