MAX saw nothing. His wife was a very womanly
woman with a splendid, almost a gorgeous snow-white womanly
complexion, and I was a young man in whom, according to his
own dictum, women ought to be interested; yet he never seemed
to feel anything like apprehension about us. This man who plumed
himself upon his knowledge of women and love and who actually
had a great deal of insight in these matters, this man, I say, was
absolutely blind to his wife's power over me. He suspected every
man and every woman under the sun, yet he was the least jealous
of men so far as his wife was concerned, though he loved and was
proud of her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself
on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but that was
never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard it from him far less
often than that other joke of his--about my being his and Dora's
son-in-law
"Look out, mother-in-law," he would say to her. "If you don't treat
your son-in-law right you'll lose him."
I have said that he was proud of her. One evening, while she stood
on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant window-shade, he drew
my attention to her efforts admiringly
"Look at her!" he said under his breath. "Another woman would
make her husband do it. Not she. I can't kick. She is not a lazy
slob, is she?"
"Certainly not," I asserted
We watched her take the shade down, wind up the spring, fit the
pins back into their sockets, and then test the flap. It was in good
working order now
"No, she is not a slob," he repeated, exultantly. "And she is not a
gossiping sort, either. She just minds her own business."
At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat. "Move
along!" he said, gaily. "Don't disturb us. I am telling Levinsky
what a bad girl you are. Run along."
She gave us a shy side-glance like those that had carried the first
germ of disquiet into my soul, and moved away
"No, she is no slob, thank God," he resumed. He boasted of her
tidiness and of the way she had picked up her English and learned
to read and spell, with little Lucy for her teacher. He depicted the
tenacity and unflagging ardor with which she had carried on her
mental pursuits ever since Lucy began to go to school. "Once she
makes up her mind to do something she will stick to it, even if the
world went under. That's the kind of woman she is. And she is no
mean, foxy thing, either. When she says something you may be
sure she means it, if I do say so. You ought to know her by this
time. Have you ever heard her say things that are not so? Or have
you heard her talk about the neighbors as other women-folk will
do? Have you, now? Just tell me," he pressed me.
"Of course I have not," I answered, awkwardly. "There are not
many women like her."
"I know there are not. And, well, if she is not devoted to her hubby,
I don't know who is," he added, sheepishly.