Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/144

by telephone. Job is plainly homesick, and will not go to bed. Every time the apple-tree hits the tree-house he barks in a melancholy manner, and Dana cuffs him for it, for Dana cannot bear anything melancholy.

There is a banshee in my house, I find. My speaking-tube to the cook's room catches the wind and wails beyond belief. Job growls at the banshee.

Dana is so happy that I wonder I do not feel happier. There is a new piano, and he sits singing. Somehow he seems to me like a new husband. But I am quite aware that I do not seem to him like a new wife. I wonder if I ever shall again? He plays with his nonchalant touch:

Yes, here it comes; I hoped he would not forget it. I really do not know why I did not want to ask him for this song. Something of the bondage of maidenhood seems to remain in a wife, a kind of impossibility,—I do not know how to express it,—a power not herself which makes for silence, the terrible law which takes from a woman's love even that which it hath, and forbids her to woo even her own husband. I do not