I was popular, and got along with women well; but I tell you honestly I loved my wife all the time; so that when a Christian busy-body poured into her ears some self-made scandal, it was a brutal, awful lie--brutal and awful, for she had never known jealousy; it did not belong to her old social creed.

But it was in the core of her somewhere, and an aboriginal passion at work naked is a thing to be remembered.

I had to face it one night....
"I was quiet, and did what I could.

After that I insisted on her going with me wherever I went, but she had changed, and I saw that, in spite of herself, the thing grew.

One day we went on an excursion down the St.
Lawrence.