A delicate woman, without children, and married to a superior
but occupied and preoccupied man, suffered intensely when her
husband neither perceived nor commented upon a new costume, or
upon some ornament she had added to the drawing-room. Never a
word of praise escaped his lips. One day she told him the sorrow
this caused her. “But what do you want?” he replied, distrest.
“I don’t know how to observe such things. What must I do?”
The wife reflected a moment, and then the two arranged that when
there was anything unusual the wife was to make him a certain
sign. His attention called, he would then understand, look, and
admire. “And now I am satisfied,” she said, a little ashamed of
her childishness. “What he says will not be spontaneous, I know,
and yet I shall be pleased to hear it; it will brighten my life.”
This absurd, and yet touching incident reveals a state of
mind that certain natures can not understand, but which
is, nevertheless, more common than we think.--DORA
MELEGARI, “Makers of Sorrow and Makers of Joy.”
(2432)