This was very different from Arthur’s eager desire to make out, after every new demonstration of the difference between them, that Nancy could not act in any other way, that it was absurd to expect other things from her. He was by far the humblest of the two, the most tolerant and forbearing. Indeed Nancy was not forbearing at all. She took offence at a look, and blazed into sudden wrath at the merest possibility of a suggestion of anything derogatory; whereas he bore numberless little shafts launched at his family, at fine people who thought themselves superior, at dainty ways and prejudices about dress and modes of living. Whenever she showed her ignorance more conspicuously than usual, or was more painfully unequal to some claim upon her, poor Arthur plunged once again into thought proving to himself that this was what he ought to have looked for, that nothing else would have been natural. He justified her in this way for everything she did, and everything she proved unable to do. But still it was rather a trying process, and the conclusion he came to at the end of a week was that Paris had not been a successful place to think of for the honeymoon. Honeymooning is more difficult in winter than in summer. There is so much more to be done in the latter season, and the open air harmonizes a great many things. Whereas two people not used to each other’s society, not interested in the same pursuits, brought up in perfectly different ways, and with no resources, shut up together even in a beautiful little apartment in a fine hotel on the Rue de Rivoli, what are they to do? The photograph was a charming occupation for one day, and it was tolerably successful, as successful as photographs ever are, and was the object of great admiration in Underhayes, when done up in a velvet frame. Nancy sent it home. “I hope you are soon going to follow,” Mrs. Bates wrote, and Nancy gave the letter to her husband to read. Certainly Paris had not been very successful. They had contented themselves with drives and walks after that mournful day at the Louvre, had gone to the Bois, which was rather naked at this time of the year, and walked about and got tired. And in the evening they had sat “at home” in the hotel. But Nancy had nothing to do, not even a scrap of fancy work, and when Arthur read to her, fell asleep; and they went to bed very early, which both of them felt was always a virtuous thing to do, if rather dull. And thus a fortnight of the honeymoon came not very cheerfully to an end. CHAPTER IV. “I don’t think you care for Paris,” said Arthur to his wife. They were driving out to the Bois, and the rain was drizzling, and it was not gay. There were fewer quarrels in this dull interval, but perhaps the fact scarcely improved the liveliness, if it slightly added to the happiness of their life.