VI

THE INLY TOUCH OF LOVE.
Two Gentlemen of Verona; ii.--7.

Grant Herman looked across the breakfast table at his Italian wife
thoughtfully a moment, considering, as he often did, what was likely to
be the effect of something he was about to say. In six years of married
life he had not learned how to adapt himself to the narrower mind and
more personal views of his wife. He perhaps fell into the error, so
common to strong natures, of being unable to comprehend that by far the
larger part of the principles which influence broad minds do not for
narrow ones exist at all. He continually tried to discover what process
of reasoning led Ninitta to given results, but he was never able to
appreciate the fact that often it was by no chain of logic whatever
that certain conclusions had been arrived at. A mental habit of
catching up opinions at haphazard, of acting simply from emotions,
however transient, instead of from convictions, was wholly outside his
mental experience, and equally unrealized in his comprehension.

He regarded Ninitta, whose foreign face and beautiful figure looked as
much out of place behind the coffee urn as would the faun of Praxiteles
at an afternoon reception, and a smothered sigh rose to his lips with
the thought how utterly he was at a loss to comprehend her. It happened
in the present case, as it often did, that his failure to understand
arose chiefly from the fact that there was nothing in particular to
understand, and, when he spoke, Ninitta received his remark quite
simply.