A New Acquaintance

It is the little foxes that spoil the tender grapes, and so it is
the little reactions of two spirits against each other that spoil
the tender blossoms of love and destroy the promised vintage.
Steadily, day by day, and week by week, were these light reactions
marring the happiness of our undisciplined young friends, and
destroying in them germ after germ, and bud after bud, which, if
left to growth and development, would have brought forth ripe,
luscious fruit in the later summer of their lives. Trifles, light as
air were noticed, and their importance magnified. Words, looks,
actions, insignificant in themselves, were made to represent states
of will or antagonism which really had no existence.

Unhappily for their peace, Irene had a brooding disposition. She
held in her memory utterances and actions forgotten by her husband,
and, by dwelling upon, magnified and gave them an importance to
which they were not entitled. Still more unhappily for their peace,
Irene met about this time, and became attached to, a lady of fine
intellectual attainments and fascinating manners, who was an
extremist in opinion on the subject of sexual equality. She was
married, but to a man greatly her inferior, though possessing some
literary talent, which he managed to turn to better account than she
did her finer powers. He had been attracted by her brilliant
qualities, and in approaching her scorched his wings, and ever after
lay at her feet. She had no very high respect for him, but found a
husband on many accounts a convenient thing, and so held on to the
appendage. If he had been man enough to remain silent on the themes
she was so fond of discussing on all occasions, people of common
sense and common perception would have respected him for what he was
worth. But he gloried in his bondage, and rattled his chains as
gleefully as if he were discoursing sweet music. What she announced
oracularly, he attempted to demonstrate by bald and feeble
arguments. He was the false understanding to her perverted will.