"Poor Ninitta!" she said. "There is something infinitely pitiful in her devotion and faithfulness to her youthful love." Edith's face assumed an expression of mingled perplexity and disquiet. With eyes downcast she seemed for a moment to be seeking a phrase in which properly to express some thought which troubled her. Then she looked up quickly. "I don't know that I ought to say it," she remarked, "but I can't help feeling that Ninitta is not so fond of her husband as she used to be. Of course I may be mistaken, but either I overestimated her devotion before they were married, or she cares less for him now." An expression of pain contracted Helen's brow. "Isn't it possible," she suggested, "that her being more demonstrative in her love for the boy makes her seem cold toward her husband?" "No," returned Edith, shaking her head, "it is more than that. I fancy sometimes that she unconsciously expected to be somehow transformed into his equal by marrying him; and that the disappointment of being no more on a level with him when she became his wife than before, has made her somehow give him up, as if she concluded that she could never really belong to his life. Of course I don't mean," she added, "that Ninitta would reason this out, and very likely I am all wrong, anyway, but certainly something of this kind has happened." "Poor Ninitta," repeated Helen, "fate hasn't been kind to her." "But Mr. Herman?" Edith returned. "What do you say of him? I think his case is far harder. What a mistake his marriage was. I cannot conceive how he was ever betrayed into such a _mesalliance_. She cannot be a companion to him; she does not understand him: she is only a child who has to be borne with, and who tries his patience and his endurance."