d to the bitterness which prompted it. He blamed her for letting her provincial narrowness prevent his accepting Fulkerson's offer qui

g them later, with larger means and larger leisure. His wife had not urged him to do it; in fact, her pride, as she said, was in his fitness for th

her matter-of-fact in their motives; but they had both a sort of humorous fondness for sentimentality. They liked to play with the romantic, from the safe vantage-ground of their real practicality, and to divine the poetry of the commonplace. Their peculiar point of view separated them from most other people, with whom their means of self-comparison were not so good since their marriage as before. Then they had travelled and seen much of the world, and th

omething, and got it printed after long delays, and when they met on the St. Lawrence Fulkerson had some of March's verses in his pocket-book, which he had cut out of a stray newspaper and carried about for years, because they pleased his fancy so much; they formed an immediate bond of union between the men when their authorship was traced and owned, and this gave a pretty color of romance to their acquaintance. But, for the most part, March was satisfied to read. He was proud of reading critically, and he kept in the current of literary interests and controversies. It all seemed to him, and to his wife at second-hand, very meritorious; he could not help contrasting his life and its inner elegance with that of other men who had no such resources. He thought that he was not arrogant about it, because he did full justice to the good qualities of those other people; he congratulated himself upon the democratic instincts which enabled him to do this; and neither he nor his wife supposed that they were selfish persons. On the contrary, they were very sympathetic; there was no good cause that they did not wish wel

whole evening with the children, he found her before the glass t

ut New York terrifies me. I don't like New York, I never did; it disheartens and distracts me; I can't find myself in it; I shouldn't know how to shop. I know I'm foolish and narr

March interposed, laughing

pathies go round two million people; I should be wretched. I suppose I'm standing in the way of your highest interest, but

rospect it seemed sufficiently so for the purposes of argument. "Don't say another word about it. The thing's over now, and I don't want to think of it any more. We couldn't change its nature if we talked all nigh

ow it hurts me to hav

whom they let lie late on Sunday, Mrs. March said to her husband, silent ov

e that," March retorted. "We

ve thought it ou

to listen," he

eglect this offer. I suppose it has its risks, but it's a risk keeping on as we are; and perhaps you will make a great success of i

ted, taking the second cup of coffee she h

present, anyway; we could let it for the winter, and come back i

n't got as far as to

ork, or the enterprise failed, you could get into something in Boston a

nothing could stop you. You may go to New Yo

Basil. I'm

thing' I would cheerfully accept any sacrifice you could make to it. But I'd rather not offer you up on a shrine I don't feel any particular faith in. I'm very comfo

t does de

ides me

e responsibility, B

ing'; it's ominous-I must do it because I want to do it, and not because you wish that you wanted me to do it. I understand your position, Isabel, and that you're really acting from a generous impulse, but there's nothing so preca

did that!" hi

dn't?" She could not say that it

w I had my heart set on it." He supposed he was treating the matter humorously, but in this sort of banter between husband and wife there is always much more than the joking. March had seen some pretty feminine inconsistencies and t

not, but that whatever he did she should have nothing to reproach herself w

ean by trappin

when you get me to commit myself to a thing by leavi

Fulkerson's scheme and then sprung New York on you. I don't supp

ning, after the boy and girl had gone to bed, the father and mother resumed their talk. He would have liked to take it up at the point from which it wandered into hostilities, for he felt it lamentable that a matter which so seriously concerned them should be confused in the fumes of senseless anger; and he was willing to make a tacit a

u are going!"

et them turn me out of my agency here,"