Page:Tales of Today.djvu/51

Rh thought that there was a guilty expression on her face, but her habit of familiarity with the world quickly enabled her to regain the wonderful control that she always exercised over herself.

"Is my wife losing her color?" I asked myself in a frightened whisper. The thought haunted me and would not let me sleep. The bottle of paste arose before my memory. "Oh, heavens!" I exclaimed, "what a suspicion! Can it be that this celestial creature is nothing more than a painting, a thin coat of white-wash! Can she have made use of such a trick to deceive me! When I thought that I was pressing to my heart the twin-sister of my soul, the privileged being created for my behoof alone, can it be that I was holding in my embrace but so much flour?"

Haunted by this horrible suspicion, I devised a plan to relieve myself of it. I purchased a barometer and eagerly awaited the advent of a rainy day. My idea was to select a Sunday when the mercury was falling, take my wife to the country, and see what effect a good washing would have on her. We were in mid July, however, and the weather remained disgustingly fair.

My apparent happiness and my constant habit of writing had wrought my sensibilities up to a very high pitch. While at work it sometimes happened to me, artless being that I was, that my feeling over-mastered my reason, and then I would abandon myself to the luxury of tears while waiting for a rhyme to come to me. These infrequent occasions were a source of much pleasure to my wife; masculine weakness is a spectacle that always affords pleasure to