"The fact is, that I cannot keep the money."
"If you like, I will keep it for you."
I accepted with pleasure, and every week brought her the surplus; and I strove that it should not be small, for she knew pretty well what I had over. At the end of a few weeks I found that I had a package of six or eight beautiful shirts with plaited cuffs, such as I had always worn ever since I was a boy. An intelligent economy saves us from need, and even in narrow circumstances makes life easy. I owe to this wise woman the exact and judicious regulation of my family, as well in the first years of our marriage—when we were very much restricted in means—as in those which came after.
My eagerness to see her every evening, my exactness in carrying her all my savings, and the respect which I showed her by my words and acts, made me dearer to her eyes than I ever was before. One evening we were standing at the window of our little parlour, which overlooked a garden which was not ours. On its ledge were some pots of flowers reaching out over the windows, and among the flowers was a plant of verbena, which she liked above all things. I talked to her of my studies, of my hopes, of the happiness I felt in being near her; and all the time I was so close to her, that our two breathings were mingled together.
She was silent, her face and eyes lifted to the starry heavens. The perfume of the flowers, the silence of the evening, and her sweet and chaste ecstasy so touched me, that, impelled by an irresistible force, I reached my lips towards hers. My movement was instantaneous, but I failed to carry out my purpose; she turned away her face, and my lips only brushed against a lock of her hair, and then she immediately moved away and seated herself beside her mother. After forty years this comes back to me as if it had just happened. Her face had an expression neither of displeasure nor of joy; but a certain somewhat of sorrow was there, which seemed an answer to all that I had been saying. When she perceived that I was serious and a little mortified, she said with calm benignity—
MY MARRIAGE.
"Do you like verbena?"
"Oh yes; I like it so much."
Then quickly rising, she cut off a sprig, put it in the buttonhole of my coat, and said—
"There, that looks well!"