_WE_ will not speak of the cause that led to this serious rupture
between Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. It was light as vanity--an airy
nothing in itself--a spark that would have gone out on a baby's
cheek without leaving a sign of its existence. On the day that Irene
left the home of her husband he had parted from her silent, moody
and with ill-concealed anger. Hard words, reproaches and accusations
had passed between them on the night previous; and both felt
unusually disturbed. The cause of all this, as we have said, was
light as vanity. During the day Mr. Emerson, who was always first to
come to his senses, saw the folly of what had occurred, and when he
turned his face homeward, after three o'clock, it was with the
purpose of ending the unhappy state by recalling a word to which he
had given thoughtless utterance.

The moment our young husband came to this sensible conclusion his
heart beat with a freer motion and his spirits rose again into a
region of tranquillity. He felt the old tenderness toward his wife
returning, dwelt on her beauty, accomplishments, virtues and high
mental endowments with a glow of pride, and called her defects of
character light in comparison.

"If I were more a man, and less a child of feeling and impulse," he
said to himself, "I would be more worthy to hold the place of
husband to a woman like Irene. She has strong peculiarities--who has
not peculiarities? Am I free from them? She is no ordinary woman,
and must not be trammeled by ordinary tame routine. She has quick
impulses; therefore, if I love her, should I not guard them, lest
they leap from her feebly restraining hand in the wrong direction?
She is sensitive to control; why, then, let her see the hand that