“I notice you do not mention money in your creed,” remarked his guest.

“No, neither do I mention air.  Both the one and the other are essential to life, and to the keeping together of body and soul.  It goes without saying that the necessities of life are necessary to happiness.  But money—­meaning wealth—­while it makes indulgence in pleasures possible, has nothing to do with happiness.  Indeed the very pleasure it ensures often obscure highest happiness—­the happiness of exaltation of the soul, of exercise of the intellect.  What has money to do with happiness?  It is a happiness to wonder—­it is a happiness to dream.  Your over-fed, jewel-decked, pleasure-drunk rich man or woman is too deeply embedded in flesh and sense to do either.  No”—­he mused, his eyes on the glowing coals in the grate, “No—­I have no desire for wealth—­for more than enough money to keep my wife and mother comfortable.  They, like myself, have learned the lesson of being poor and happy.  But I must keep them above want—­I will keep them above want!” As he repeated the words the meditative mood dropped from him.  He straightened himself in his chair with sudden energy, his voice trembled and sunk almost to a whisper, in place of the dreamy look his eyes flamed with passion.

“Mr. Graham,” he exclaimed, “to see those you love better than your own soul in want, and, in spite of working like mad, to be powerless to raise them out of it, is hell!”

A second time the exquisite child-wife slipped quickly, noiselessly, to his side and with the same easy grace leaned over and touched his brow with her lips, but this time instead of moving away, remained hanging over the back of his chair, her fair hand gently toying with the ringlets on his brow.  He was calm in an instant.

“I mean, of course, such a condition would be intolerable provided it should ever exist,” he added.

* * * * *

As the visitor stepped from the cottage door into the chill of the bright November night, and made his way down the little path of flagstones—­irregularly shaped and clumsily laid down, so that mossy turf which was still green, appeared between them—­he felt that he was stepping back into a flat, stale and unprofitable world from one of the enchanted regions, “out of space, out of time,” of Poe’s own creation.

He had indeed, had a revelation of harmonious home-life such as he had not guessed existed in a work-a-day world—­of the music, the poetry of living.  He had had a glimpse into the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.

CHAPTER XXV.