herself, and in accepting John and his worldly goods she gave up a decently paid library position.  The insides of books were also familiar to her, in impersonal concerns she had a shrewd sense of people, in general she faced the world with a brave and delicate assurance.  Finally she believed with fervour the creed and ethics that John happened to inculcate every week, and it is to be feared that she took him for a prophet of righteousness.  Armed at all points that did not involve her personal interests, there was she peculiarly vulnerable.  She must have accepted John, aside from the glamour of his edifying articles, simply because of his evident and plaintively reasserted need of her.

Yet they were very happy together, as people who marry on this unequal basis often are.  After their panoramic week at Niagara, along the St. Lawrence, and home by the two lakes and the Hudson, they settled down in John’s room, which by the addition of two more had been promoted to being the living room of an apartment.  Her few personal possessions made a timid, tolerated appearance between his gilt Buddhas and pewter jugs.  But she herself queened it easily over the bizarre possessions now become hers.  Had you seen her of an evening, alert, fragile, golden under the lamp, and had you seen John’s vague glance turn from a moongrey row of Korean bowls to her deeper eyes, you would have been convinced not merely that he regarded her as the finest object in his collection, but also that he was right.  It would be intrusive to dwell upon the joys and sorrows of light housekeeping in New York on a small income.  Enough to say that the joys preponderated in this case.  They read much together, he gradually cultivated an awkward acquaintance with her friends—­he had practically none, and at times she made the rounds of the curiosity shops and auctions with him.  Here, she explained, her part was that of discourager of enthusiasm, but repression was never practised in a more sympathetic and discerning spirit.  Her taste became hardly inferior to his, and their barren quests together established a new comradeship between them.  It was probably, then, merely an accident that he never included Novelli’s in these aimless rounds, and so never showed her the enamelled cross.

In the long run their imaginary foraging, always a recreation to her, became a sore trial to him.  With the demonstration that two really cannot live cheaper than one, the old covetousness smouldering for want of an outlet once more burned hotly within.  It expressed itself outwardly in a general uneasiness and irritability.  The little fund, her money and his, that lay in savings bank began to spend itself fantastically.  One day he reckoned that two-thirds of the cross had been put by, and banished the disloyal thought with difficulty.  Visionary plans of selling something and making the collection pay for itself were entertained, but when it came to the point nothing could be spared.  Perhaps the gnawings of this hunger might have been controlled, had he thought to confide in Miriam.  More likely yet, a system of rare and strictly limited indulgence might have banked the fires between times.  However that be, the thwarted collector was to be sunk for a time in the devoted husband.  Miriam lay ill of a wasting fever.