PERCY.

And he, prone upon his back this warm September day, read this long epistle from his new wife, then laid it down and closing his eyes murmured softly, “What a strange little puss it is!” Lying in the dim light her hand had created for him, he thought of his own troubles and hers, just as she had stated them.  The blood would flush up to his brow as her cool ignoring of his surpassing attractions, to which all other women accorded their full meed of praise, rose up before him.  He of whom it had been said if he beckoned with his finger women left their duties, gave up their very life to do his pleasure!—­he to have the girl he had honored by making his wife, a little brown woman, plain and almost passe (he was man enough not to care for her poverty), show she cared no more for his love than he did for hers I—­was as indifferent to him as he to her!  Indifference from a woman was a new experience to him, and annoyed him.

Yet her quaint, frank letter touched him.  What did she mean by dying soon and letting him be free again?  Poor little midge! was she dying of a broken heart because a treacherous woman had fooled her out of a part of her life?  Poor little robin! she was his wife now, and he could heal the worst heartache in any woman’s breast.  He had tried that thing before, and succeeded, even if he broke the heart afterward.  Die, indeed!  Not if he knew it:  even Death should not have a little woman he meant to be good to.

And as he remembered all her faithfulness to him during these weary weeks of pain, he thought, “By Jove! beauty’s not all, for no woman, had her face been like that of Phryne of Thebes, or her charms as entrancing as the bewitching Dudu’s, could have been more lovely in her kindness to me.  How brave and strong she has been!  What a faithful little soul it is!  Always ready, day and night, to do just what I want done and in the way I want it, never knocking things about or fidgeting round, but just ready-handed, neat and bright.  God knows, a handsome woman wouldn’t have risked the spoiling her beauty by all these weary, sleepless nights, especially for a man she did not love.”  And then to think she was actually willing to work and slave for him, and support him out of her share of the booty, and let him fool away his own on other women!  “Wonder what the little dame means to buy her own fine things with, for even robins must get clothing?  I’ll ask her that.  Bless the little woman’s soul! she makes me think of her so much that I believe I’m half in love with her.  Um!” and he stopped:  “I’m getting sentimental and poetic, I swear!  But if it were in me to love anything that was not beautiful, I believe I could love this little girl, who has come into my life so strangely.  She owns up to having loved, and is done with all the stale farce.  Some fools,” and he felt very indignant, “slighted her because she had no beauty, though, upon my soul, now I think of it, I’m not so certain about that.  There’s a something in her face takes a man’s breath—­something that one would rather die than lose if he once loved it, and which once loved would be better than any beauty.  What’s that Spenser says?—­