Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/124

since I became his wife. I have traversed worlds that astronomy never knew, and I am transmuted into a being whose nature I do not recognize.

Here in my own room, where I have been such a happy and solitary girl, I see everywhere the careless, precious signs of him—his slippers on my hearth, his necktie tossed upon my bureau, the newspapers that he always flings upon the floor, and that I go and pick up; a messenger from heaven could not have convinced me six months ago that I would ever do it.

So, upon my heart, upon my brain, he flings the traces of his presence, the impress of his nature. It is to me as if my soul were a nickel plate on which is etched a powerful and beautiful picture, of which I know that I know not yet the composition or the scope, and though I love the picture, I fear it, because it is unfinished. But he—he dips a rosebud in a rainbow, and paints him garlands and Cupids, smiling steadily, so debonair he is. There are times (dear Accepted Manuscript, you will never tell) when the lightness of his heart seems to me disarranged from mine—only for the moment, of course, I mean. But yet I love him for the rainbow in him. And perhaps, as Dana says, there is a zone of twilight in my soul. A man does not like to be loved too solemnly; whereas I think a