into that sweet land of illusions to which our footsteps turn whenever
they are left to themselves, it is his very self unconsciously writing
itself into his letters, the very man as he is without his body. Then I
meet him again, and all illusions go. He is what I had always found him
when we were together, good and amiable; but some trick of manner, some
feature or attitude that I do not quite like, makes me forget, and be
totally unable to remember, what I know from his letters to be true of
him. He, no doubt, feels the same thing about me, and so between us
there is a thick veil of something fixed, which, dodge as we may, we
never can get round.

"Well, and what do you conclude from all that?" said the Man of Wrath,
who had been going out by the verandah door with his gun and his dogs to
shoot the squirrels before they had eaten up too many birds, and of
whose coat-sleeve I had laid hold as he passed, keeping him by me like a
second Wedding Guest, and almost as restless, while I gave expression to
the above sentiments.

"I don't know," I replied, "unless it is that the world is very evil and
the times are waxing late, but that doesn't explain anything either,
because it isn't true."

And he went down the steps laughing and shaking his head and muttering
something that I could not quite catch, and I am glad I could not, for
the two words I did hear were women and nonsense.

He has developed an unexpected passion for farming, much to my relief,
and though we came down here at first only tentatively for a year, three
have passed, and nothing has been said about going back to town. Nor
will anything be said so long as he is not the one to say it, for no