“It's not so spacious, I know, as either the past or the future, but it's all we have.” “There!” cried Clara. “That's _fatalism_! It's _worse_ than fatalism!” “And is fatalism so very bad?” asked her husband. “It's Mahometanism!” “Well, it isn't necessarily a plurality of wives,” returned Atherton, in subtle anticipation of her next point. “And it's really only another name for resignation, which is certainly a good thing.” “Resignation? Oh, I don't know about that!” Atherton laughed, and put his arm round her waist: an argument that no woman can answer in a man she loves; it seems to deprive her of her reasoning faculties. In the atmosphere of affection which she breathed, she sometimes feared that her mental powers were really weakening. As a girl she had lived a life full of purposes, which, if somewhat vague, were unquestionably large. She had then had great interests,--art, music, literature,--the symphony concerts, Mr. Hunt's classes, the novels of George Eliot, and Mr Fiske's lectures on the cosmic philosophy; and she had always felt that they expanded and elevated existence. In her moments of question as to the shape which her life had taken since, she tried to think whether the happiness which seemed so little dependent on these things was not beneath the demands of a spirit which was probably immortal and was certainly cultivated. They all continued to be part of her life, but only a very small part; and she would have liked to ask her husband whether his influence upon her had been wholly beneficial. She was not sure that it had; but neither was she sure that it had not. She had never fully consented to the distinctness with which he classified all her emotions and ideas as those of a woman: in her heart she doubted whether a great many of them might not be those of a man, though she had never found any of them exactly like his. She could not complain that he did not treat her as an equal; he deferred to her, and depended upon her good sense to an extent that sometimes alarmed her, for she secretly knew that she had a very large streak of silliness in her nature. He seemed to tell her everything, and to be greatly ruled by her advice, especially in matters of business; but she could not help observing that he often kept matters involving certain moral questions from her till the moment for deciding them was past. When she accused him of this, he confessed that it was so; but defended himself by saying that he was afraid her conscience might sway him against his judgment. Clara now recurred to these words of his as she sat looking at him through her tears across the breakfast table. “Was that the reason you never told me about poor Ben before?” “Yes, and I expect you to justify me. What good would it have done to tell you?” “I could have told you, at least, that, if Ben had any such feeling as that, it wasn't _his_ fault altogether.”