Though it has to be admitted that married life is less peaceful than hard study--and the bright woman who recently said, "A husband is more trying than any problem in Euclid," no doubt had good cause for the remark.

Married or single, woman both physically and mentally is the greatest sufferer in the world--her time of youth and unthinking joy is brief, her martyrdom long--and it is hardly wonderful that she goes so often "to the bad" when there is so little offered to attract her towards the good.
Rivardi, letting himself go on the flood-tide of hope and ambition, pleased his mind with imaginary pictures of Morgana as his wife and as mother of his children, rehabilitating his fallen fortunes, restoring his once great house and building a fresh inheritance for its former renown.

He saw no reason why this should not be,--yet--even while he indulged in his thoughts of her, he knew well enough that behind her small delicate personality there was a powerful intellectual "lens," so to speak, through which she examined the ins and outs of character in man or woman; and he felt that he was always more or less under this "lens," looked at as carefully as a scientist might study bacteria, and that as a matter of fact it was as unlikely as the descent of the moon-goddess to Endymion that she would ever submit herself to his possession.

Nevertheless, he argued, stranger things had happened! The grey peep of dawn widened into a silver rift, and the silver rift streamed into a bar of gold, and the gold broke up into long strands of blush pink and pale blue like festal banners hanging in heaven's bright pavilion, and the "White Eagle" flew on swiftly, steadily, securely, among all the glories of the dawn like a winged car for the conveyance of angels.

And both Rivardi and Gaspard thought they were not far from the realisation of an angel when Morgana suddenly appeared at the door of her sleeping-cabin, attired in a fleecy-wool gown of purest white, her wonderful gold hair unbound and falling nearly to her feet.
"What a perfect morning!" she exclaimed--"All things seem new! And I have had such a good rest! The air is so pure and clean--surely we are over the sea ?" "We are some fifteen thousand feet above the Mediterranean"-- answered Rivardi, looking at her as he spoke with unconcealed admiration;--never, he thought, had she seemed so charming, youthful and entirely lovable--"I am glad you have rested--you look quite refreshed and radiant.