“No, I think not,” said Mr. Emerson.  “She would be sensitive in the extreme if offended by any word or act of mine.”

“Well, letting that all pass, Mr. Emerson, what do you think of Mrs. Eager?”

“That she is an attractive and highly accomplished woman.”

“And the one who reaches your ideal of a wife?”

“No, ma’am,” was the unhesitating answer, and made in so emphatic a tone that there was no mistaking his sincerity.  There was a change in his countenance and manner.  He looked unusually serious.

The lady tried to rally him, but he had come in too sober a state of mind for pleasant trifling on this subject, of all others.

“My kind, good friend,” he said, “I owe you many thanks for the interest you have taken in me, and for your efforts to get me a companion.  But I do not intend to marry.”

“So you have said—­”

“Pardon me for interrupting you.”  Mr. Emerson checked the light speech that was on her tongue.  “I am going to say to you some things that have never passed my lips before.  You will understand me; this I know, or I would not let a sentence come into utterance.  And I know more, that you will not make light of what to me is sacred.”

The lady was sobered in a moment.

“To make light of what to you is sacred would be impossible,” she replied.

“I believe it, and therefore I am going to speak of things that are to me the saddest of my life, and yet are coming to involve the holiest sentiments.  I have more than one reason for desiring now to let another look below the quiet surface; and I will lift the veil for your eyes alone.  You know that I was married nearly twenty years ago, and that my wife separated herself from me in less than three years after our union; and you also know that the separation was made permanent by a divorce.  This is all that you or any other one knows, so far as I have made communication on the subject; and I have reason to believe that she who was my wife has been as reserved in the matter as myself.

“The simple facts in the case are these:  We were both young and undisciplined, both quick-tempered, self-willed, and very much inclined to have things our own way.  She was an only child, and so was I. Each had been spoiled by long self-indulgence.  So, when we came together in marriage, the action of our lives, instead of taking a common pulsation, was inharmonious.  For a few years we strove together blindly in our bonds, and then broke madly asunder.  I think we were about equally in fault; but if there was a preponderance of blame, it rested on my side, for, as a man, I should have kept a cooler head and shown greater forbearance.  But the time for blame has long since passed.  It is with the stern, irrevocable facts that we are dealing now.