This philosophy of the indisputable and the sensible brimmed the measure.  “What would you think of me,” said she, in her pleasantest, most deliberately irritating way in the world, “if I were to insist that you get up late and breakfast late?  You should learn to let live as well as to live.  You are too fond of trying to compel everybody to do as you wish.”

“I make ’em see that what I wish is what they ought.  That’s not compelling.”

“It’s even more unpopular.”

“I’m not looking for popularity, but for success.”

“Well, please don’t annoy me in the mornings hereafter.”

“You don’t seem to realize you’ve renounced your foolish idlers and all their ways, and have joined the working classes.”  His good humor had come back with breakfast; he had finished two large trout, much bread and marmalade and coffee—­and it had given her a pleasure that somehow seemed vulgar and forbidden to see him eat so vastly, with such obvious delight.  As he made his jest about her entry into the working classes—­she who suggested a queen bee, to employ the labors of a whole army of willing toilers, while she herself toiled not—­he was tilted back at his ease, smoking a cigarette and watching the sunbeams sparkle in the waves of her black hair like jewels showered there.  “You’re surely quite well again,” he went on, the trend of his thought so hidden that he did not see it himself.

“I don’t feel especially well,” said she, instantly on guard.

He laughed.  “You’d not dare say that to yourself in the mirror.  You have wonderful color.  Your eyes—­there never was anything so clear.  You were always straight—­that was one of the things I admired about you.  But now, you seem to be straight without the slightest effort—­the natural straightness of a sapling.”

This was most agreeable, for she loved compliments, liked to discover that the charms which she herself saw in herself were really there.  But encouraging such talk was not compatible with the course she had laid out for herself with him.  She continued silent and cold.

“If you’d only go to sleep early, and get up early, and drop all that the railway train carried us away from, you’d be as happy as the birds and the deer and the fish.”

“I shall not change my habits,” said she tartly.  “I hope you’ll drop the subject.”

He leaned across the table toward her, the same charm now in his face and in his voice that had drawn her when she first heard him in public speech.  “Let’s suppose I’m a woodchopper, and you are my wife.  We’ve never been anywhere but just here.  We’re going to live here all our lives—­just you and I—­and no one else—­and we don’t want any one else.  And we love each other—­”

It was very alluring, but there was duty frowning upon her yielding senses.  “Please don’t let that smoke drift into my face,” said she crossly.  “It’s choking me.”

He flung away the cigarette.  “Beg pardon,” he muttered, between anger and humility.  “Thought you didn’t mind smoking.”