The Husband Test

hey talked of life and death, the common subjects of gossip of the young. He showed her his ambition, and she fed it, as she might have a pet dog he had displayed. Finally he spoke in a hushed voice: " I could be the greatest poet in the world," he said, "if " " If what? " Bettina breathed. " If I had you." There was a silence. " Oh, don't you think you could, anyway? " she asked, distressed. But it appeared that he could not. " You make me feel things freshly again. I see the world with the eyes of a child! You make everything alive, because you are so alive yourself!" " I'm very glad," said Bettina, modestly. " As soon as I saw you " he began. " I, too," confessed Bettina. They gazed at each other. Pierrots and blue-painted Egyptians jostled them, but they paid no heed. " To live near the springs of beauty always, to feel the rhythm of life," said he. " Yes," said Bettina. How right she had been to extricate herself from William's engagement ring. Why, William had no conception of things like this. She felt beauty laving her like a pool in which one bathed, making her a part of it. She seemed to breathe in the atmosphere of poetry. She was sure that she felt the rhythm of life. It was a delicious feeling, something like being saved by an evangelist at camp-meeting. " If we hadn't met," said the poet, awed. Her eyes grew dark with the horror of it. " You are the loveliest thing," he began. "Hadn't we bette...