But he was different from her; with a vastly more capacious brain, in which there was such ample room that perhaps the present did not even impinge upon the past, much less drive it out altogether.  She who in the beginning had tacitly agreed with those who considered her the obvious superior now felt humbly pleased in recognizing that he was of grander, finer, and more delicate stuff than herself.  And for the first and last time she was assailed by a disturbing doubt.  Was he completely happy even now?  He loved her, he loved his children, he loved his successful industry; yet sometimes when she found him alone his face was almost as somber as it had ever been.

And those bad dreams of his still continued.  At first, when things were all in jeopardy, it had seemed not unnatural that the troubles of the day should break his rest at night; but why should he dream now, when he was prosperous and without a single anxiety to distress him?  Did he in sleep go back to that old storm of anger, jealousy, and grief about which he never thought during his waking hours?

And again Mavis was actuated all unconsciously by the elemental selfishness that mingles with our joy.  When we are happy we want others to be happy too, we can not brook their not being so; even transient darkness in those we love seems inimical to the light that is burning so cheerfully in ourselves.  Mavis ceased to trouble herself with questions, and forgot that they remained unanswered.

When Dale came in she was, however, more than ordinarily sweet to him, waiting on him, bringing the supper dishes, not sitting down until he was served, and watching him while he ate.  She told him that she had been reading about the dog on the railway line, and that he was not to do such things.  If he ever again felt such a wild impulse, he was to stifle it immediately by remembering his wife and bairns.

“D’you understand, Will?  We won’t have it—­and we all three think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not knowing better.  You’re not a boy.”

“No,” he said, “I shall be forty-two next year.  Look here,” and he pointed to his temples.  “Look at my gray hair.”

“I can’t see it.”

“But it’s there, my dear, all the same.  I am beginning to turn toward the sear and yellow leaf, as Shakespeare puts it.”

She admired the easy way in which he quoted Shakespeare, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.  Indeed, all through supper she was admiring him.  She thought how beautifully he spoke, expressing himself so elegantly, and with tones in his voice that every day seemed to sound a little more cultivated.  At first after their arrival at Vine-Pits, being plunged again into the midst of purely rustic talk, he had fallen back in regard to his diction.  Instinctively he reverted to the dialect that had been his own, and that was being used by everybody about him; but now one might say that he really had two languages—­his rough patter for the yard and the fields, and his carefully-measured phrasing for the home, office, and upper circles.  She understood that his constant reading and his unflagging desire for self-improvement were telling rapidly; and with a touch of sadness she wondered if, passing on always, he would finally leave her quite behind.