There is a famous query of the old schoolman at which we have all flung a jest in our time:  How many angels can dance on the point of a needle? In a world with so many real troubles it seems, perhaps, a little idle to worry too long over the question.  Yet in the mere question, putting any answer outside possibility, there is a wonderful suggestiveness, if it has happened to come to you illuminated by experience.  It becomes a little clearer, perhaps, if we substitute devils for angels.  A friend of mine used always to look at it thus inversely when he quarrelled with his wife.  Forgive so many enigmas to start with, but it was this way.  They never quarrelled more than three times a year, and it was always on the very smallest trifle, one particular trifle too.  On the great things of life they were at one.  It was but a tiny point, a needle’s end of difference, on which they disagreed, and it was on that needle’s end that the devils danced.  All the devils of hell, you would have said.  At any rate, you would have no longer wondered why the old philosopher put so odd a question, for you had only to see little Dora’s face lit up with fury over that ridiculous trifle to have exclaimed:  ’Is it possible that so many devils can dance on a point where there seems hardly footing for a frown?’

However, so it was, and when I tell you what the needle’s end was, you will probably not think me worth a serious person’s attention.  That I shall, of course, regret, but it was simply this:  Dora would write with a ‘J’ pen—­for which it was William’s idiosyncrasy to have an unconquerable aversion.  She might, you will think, have given way to her husband on so absurd a point, a mere pen-point of disagreement.  He was the tenderest of husbands in every other point.  There is nothing that love can dream that he was not capable of doing for his wife’s sake.  But, on the other hand, it was equally true that there can be no other wife in the world more devoted than Dora; with her also there was nothing too hard for love’s sake.  Could he not waive so ridiculous a blemish?  It was little enough for love to achieve, surely.  Yes, strange as it seems, their love was equal to impossible heroisms:  to have died for each other had been easy, but to surrender this pen-point was impossible.  And, alas! as they always do, the devils found out this needle’s end—­and danced.  For their purpose it was as good as a platform.  It gave them joy indeed to think what stupendous powers of devilry they could concentrate on so tiny a stage.

It was a sad thing, too, that Dora and William were able to avoid the subject three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, but on that odd day it was sure to crop up.  Perhaps they had been out late the night before, and their nerves were against them.  The merest accident would bring it on.  Dora would ask William to post a letter for her in town.  Being out of sorts, and susceptible to the silliest irritation, he would not be able to resist criticising the addressing.  If he didn’t mention it, Dora would notice his ‘expression.’  That would be ‘quite enough,’ you may be sure.  Half the tragedies of life depend on ‘expression.’