For the first time since she had known him he seemed confused, and there was a flush of mortification in his face. He picked up a scrap of paper and pencil which were lying on a table near them, and handing them to her, said,—
"Write it."
Without the slightest hesitation, she wrote quickly on the paper, and handed it back to him. He looked at it with a queer smile, tore up the scrap, and said,—
"That would have come out in the story you refused to hear. I have never deceived you in anything."
"Except in this," she answered, putting her arms around him. "You are a much better man than I believed you were when we were first acquainted; you have deceived me in that. My married life could not be happier than it is."
"I do not take much credit to myself that we are content as husband and wife," he replied. "I think the fact that we are mated has a great deal to do with it. There are a great many worthy people—for the world is full of good women, if not of good men—who live in the greatest wretchedness; who are as unhappy in their married relations as we are happy. I have known excellent men married to excellent wives, who are wretched, as I have known two excellent men to fail as partners in business. You and I were fortunate in our alliance. It often occurs to me that Mrs. Armsby should have had a better husband, poor woman. How many brave, capable men there are in the world who would rejoice in the possession of such a wife; worthy, honest men who made a mistake only in marrying the wrong woman, and who will die believing there is nothing in the world worth living for, as I believed before I met you. Everyone who is out in the world a great deal knows such men, and pities them, as I do; for when I contrast my past with my present, I regret that others, more deserving than I, cannot enjoy the contentment which love brings. You and I are not phenomenal people in any respect, but we are man and wife in the fullest sense of the term; and others might enjoy the peace we enjoy were they equally fortunate in their love affairs. It is a grand old world for you and I, and those like us, but it is a hell for those who have been coaxed into unsuitable marriages by the devil."
"There is as much bitterness in your voice now as there was when you said to me in the church that you were going away never to come back," his wife said, looking at him with keen apprehension.
"I am a different man now to what I was then," he replied, with his old good-nature. "Have you never remarked it?"
"Often; every time I hear you speak."
"I find that there are splendid people even in Davy's Bend, and I imagine that when the mind is not tortured they may be found anywhere. In my visits to the homes of Davy's Bend, I hear it said in every quarter that surely the neighbors are the best people in the world, and their kindness in sickness and death cause me to believe that as a rule the people are very good, unless you chain two antagonistic spirits together, and demand that they be content. I know so much of the weakness of my race—because it happens to be my business—that I wonder they are as industrious and honorable as I find them. This never occurred to me before, and I think it is evidence that I am a changed man; that I am more charitable than I ever was before, and better."