 simple, and genuine, and good she was! She was a flawless wife and
mother; and yet I had married her for no particular reason, except that by the
customs of chivalry she was my property until some knight should win her from me
in the field. She had hunted Britain over for me; had found me at the
hanging-bout outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at my
side in the placidest way and as of right. I was a New Englander, and in my
opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her, sooner or later. She
couldn't see how, but I cut argument short and we had a wedding.
    Now I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw.
Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and
perfectest comradeship that ever was. People talk about beautiful friendships
between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared
with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals
of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two
friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.
    In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries away, and
my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up and down the unreplying
vacancies of a vanished world. Many a time Sandy heard that imploring cry come
from my lips in my sleep. With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine
upon our child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine. It
touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet, too, when she
smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played her quaint and pretty
surprise upon me:
    »The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made holy, and
the music of it will abide alway in our ears. Now thou'lt kiss me, as knowing
the name I have given the child.«
    But I didn't know it, all the same. I hadn't an idea in the world; but it
would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her pretty game; so I never let
on, but said:
    »Yes, I know, sweetheart - how dear and good it is of you, too! But I want
to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter it first - then its
music will be perfect.«
    Pleased to the marrow, she murmured
