Jewel Weed

This radiant morning, then, he felt himself under the dominion of the

grand inquisitors who invented the torture of little things. Life

consisted in having slow drops of water fall on his head, one at a time.

Family life was slimed with small bickerings, children were a nuisance,

society a bore, and the most beautiful woman in the world defiant and

uninspiring at the breakfast-table.

It does not take Cleopatra long to wither the ideals.

Dick began to analyze his wife, which is a dangerous thing for a man to

do. If a husband wishes to preserve the lover's state of mind, he must

continue to think of his wife as a single indivisible creature, not a

compound of faults, virtues and charms, lest in some unlucky moment he

find that the faults are the biggest ingredient.

Dick, however, was thinking, and the substance of his thoughts was that

this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if

he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his

mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer

persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet,

innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and

more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the

world in general she was still the big-eyed ingenue, learning to take

her place in society. To him alone, it seemed, to him whose love and

reverence she ought to have desired, she was becoming indifferent as to

the impression she made. Was the other side of her a pose? Dick found

himself walking very fast, and he slackened his pace to a respectable

gait. If Lena the lovable was a pose, then the inspiration and ideals

and joy of his life were frauds. That thought was too appalling. He

deliberately stopped thinking about it and turned his thoughts to frauds

in city politics, which were easier to endure.

Lena, on the other hand, sitting idly by the window, indulged in a

little reflection on her own part. She was revolving with some

bitterness her disappointment and disillusionment. She remembered what a

glorious gilded creature Dick had appeared to her at one time. Now he

was sunk to be a very ordinary young man, with curious and stupid

idiosyncrasies, and not nearly so rich and important as many of the

people she came in contact with. Might she have done better if she had

waited? She too stopped regretting and turned her attention to a novel.

She was just beginning to discover the charms of "Gyp." She looked up to

see Mr. Early come up the pathway, and a moment later he stood beside

her.

"Mrs. Percival," he said, "I have brought you this little vase, the

first of its kind that my artists have produced. I thought it so really

beautiful that I could not resist laying one before you as a kind of

tribute."