Given opportunity, social equality, and a fine, unremitting tact, and it would seem that any man can marry any woman, whose affections are free. Else, it would be hard to understand how Doctor Remy could have found his way into the heart of Astra Lyte; unless indeed, as is frequently the case, their very dissimilarity should have constituted a principle of attraction; character has its own laws of effective contrast. Astra was enthusiastic, generous, affectionate, with strong religious instincts and aspirations; Doctor Remy was cold, selfish, austere, without reverential sentiment, and, in matters of faith, an utter sceptic. But these traits need not be supposed to have exhibited themselves to Astra in their naked unloveliness. To her imagination, doubtless, they took the fairer form of a calm temperament, and great force and firmness of character, allied to a keen and critical intellect; which last must needs be allowed to take its own appropriate time and road to belief (except as it seemed willing to owe something to her loving guidance). And Astra was of the age and character which are most prone to fall down and worship human intellect; failing, as yet, to understand that it is, in itself, of the earth earthy, and really noble and admirable only as it is enlightened by the spirit of God. She was dazzled and fascinated by the extent and variety of Doctor Remy's attainments, and the range and freedom of his ideas. To talk with him was like drawing the curtain and opening wide the window on a wintry evening, admitting free, frosty air, and giving a far outlook over bleak, white hills and leafless forests. Nor did it alarm her that the air was much too fresh and chill to be breathed long with comfort or safety, and the landscape drearily bare and skeleton-like, since the doctor was always ready, at her slightest sign, to drop window and curtain, and turn back with her to warmer precincts and gentler themes.