comes."

"And your husband," asked the Spirit, after a pause, "never got
beyond the family sitting-room?"

"Never," she returned, impatiently; "and the worst of it was that
he was quite content to remain there. He thought it perfectly
beautiful, and sometimes, when he was admiring its commonplace
furniture, insignificant as the chairs and tables of a hotel
parlor, I felt like crying out to him: 'Fool, will you never
guess that close at hand are rooms full of treasures and wonders,
such as the eye of man hath not seen, rooms that no step has
crossed, but that might be yours to live in, could you but find
the handle of the door?'"

"Then," the Spirit continued, "those moments of which you lately
spoke, which seemed to come to you like scattered hints of the
fulness of life, were not shared with your husband?"

"Oh, no--never. He was different. His boots creaked, and he
always slammed the door when he went out, and he never read
anything but railway novels and the sporting advertisements in
the papers--and--and, in short, we never understood each other in
the least."

"To what influence, then, did you owe those exquisite
sensations?"

"I can hardly tell. Sometimes to the perfume of a flower;
sometimes to a verse of Dante or of Shakespeare; sometimes to a