Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/125

woman builds within her heart an altar to an unknown god, and leaves her happiest hour to steal away and worship.

I have discovered a new planet: Dana has a real though untrained musical nature. He has flitted to the piano off and on, of course, and I have sometimes said, "What a touch!" But he has never truly played for me before. Last week he came home with a violin. It seems he sent it somewhere to be mended a year ago, and forgot it (which is quite like him); and now that he has remembered, I am half jealous of the violin, he so devotes himself. He plays with a kind of feeling that I do not know how to define, unless to say that it is passionate, imperious, and fitful. If I said the utter truth to my very soul, perhaps I could not call it tender music. But why say? I have already found that the first lesson a wife must learn is not to admit the utter truth about her husband to her own soul. If she mistranslates, she is unhappy; if she overvalues him, she may be more so. Marriage needs something of the opalescent haze such as betrothal breathes, and daily life goes a beggar for the element of romance. This vanished something Dana's playing seems to be about to recall to us. Just now he has gone music-mad. From