dazzled and racked him. Suddenly the man, as he stood there, put his
hands before his face; he was weeping like a child. That which Maria
had done, instead of awakening wrath, had aroused a pity for himself
and for her, which seemed too great to be borne. For the instant, the
dead triumphed over the living.

Then Harry took up the lamp and went to his own room. He set the lamp
on the dresser, and looked at his face, with the rays thrown upward
upon it, very much as Maria had done the night of her mother's death.
When he viewed himself in the looking-glass, he smiled involuntarily;
the appearance of youth returned. He curled his mustache and moved
his head this way and that. He thought about some new clothes which
he was to have. He owned to himself, with perfect ingenuousness, that
he was, in his way, as a man, as good-looking as Ida herself.
Suddenly he remembered how Abby had looked when she was a young girl
and he had married her; he had not compared himself so favorably with
her. The image of his dead wife, as a young girl, was much fairer in
his mind than that of Ida Slome.

"There's no use talking, Abby was handsomer than Ida when she was
young," he said to himself, as he began to undress. He went to sleep
thinking of Abby as a young girl, but when once asleep he dreamed of
Ida Slome.



Chapter IX


Harry and Ida Slome were to be married the Monday before