So the thing happened which always has and always will happen in such cases; when the magic and the enchantment of Jessy’s great personal beauty had lost their first novelty and power, she gradually became to her husband—­“Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”

I did not much blame Will Lennox.  It is very hard to love what we do not comprehend.  A wife who could have sympathized in his pursuits, talked over the chances of his “Favorite,” or gone to sea with him in his yacht, would always have found Will an indulgent and attentive husband.  But fast horses did not interest Jessy, and going to sea made her ill; so gradually these two fell much further apart than they ought to have done.

Now, if Petralto had been wicked and Jessy weak, he might have revenged himself on the man and woman who had wrought him so much suffering.  But he had set his love far too high to sully her white name; and Jessy, in that serenity which comes of lofty and assured principles, had no idea of the possibility of her injuring her husband by a wrong thought.  Yet instinctively they both sought to keep apart; and if by chance they met, the grave courtesy of the one and the sweet dignity of the other left nothing for evil hopes or thoughts to feed upon.  One morning, two years after Jessy’s marriage, I received a note from Petralto, asking me to call upon him immediately.  To my amazement, his rooms were dismantled, his effects packed up, and he was on the point of leaving New York.

“Whither bound?” I asked.  “To Rome?”

“No; to the Guadalupe.  I want to try what nature can do for me.  Art, society, even friendship, fail at times to comfort me for my lost love.  I will go back to nature, the great, sweet mother and lover of men.”

So Petralto went out of New York; and the world that had known him forgot him—­forgot even to wonder about, much less to regret, him.

I was no more faithful than others.  I fell in with a wonderful German philosopher, and got into the “entities” and “non-entities,” forgot Petralto in Hegel, and felt rather ashamed of the days when I lounged and trifled in the artist’s pleasant rooms.  I was “enamored of divine philosophy,” took no more interest in polite gossip, and did not waste my time reading newspapers.  In fact, with Kant and Fichte before me, I did not feel that I had the time lawfully to spare.

Therefore, anyone may imagine my astonishment when, about three years after Petralto’s departure from New York, he one morning suddenly entered my study, handsome as Apollo and happy as a bridegroom.  I have used the word “groom” very happily, for I found out in a few minutes that Petralto’s radiant condition was, in fact, the condition of a bridegroom.

Of course, under the circumstances, I could not avoid feeling congratulatory; and my affection for the handsome, loving fellow came back so strongly that I resolved to break my late habits of seclusion, and go to the Brevoort House and see his bride.