"Of course," said Emil. "And when it comes to that," he added, "there's no one in the world who can pick a flaw in yours, you little saint." "You mustn't say things like that," Constance murmured. Nevertheless, so far as it was a manifestation of confidence from the man she loved, it was pleasant to hear. From this time her attendance at church was very infrequent. She did not cease to go altogether, but almost every Sunday was spent in expeditions in the open air. The cares resulting from the birth of two children necessarily interfered with her going regularly to service while they were infants, and as soon as they were able to walk, the Sunday outings were resumed with the little boy and girl as companions. Mr. Prentiss did not revisit the house, but on each of the two or three occasions when Constance occupied her old seat in St. Stephen's, she felt that the rector had noticed her. He had apparently left her to her devices, but his glance told her that she was not forgotten. IV It is fitting and fortunate that a young woman in a large city, who has given her happiness into the keeping of a man with his own way to make, should be ignorant of her peril, and that charmed by love she should take for granted that he will succeed. But the rest of the world has no excuse for being equally blind, since the rest of the world is aware that there is no recipe by which a girl of twenty can secure a guaranty either of domestic happiness or ability on the part of her lover to hold his own in the competition for a livelihood. It is easy for the moralist of society, writing at his desk, to utter the solemn truth that young people should not rush hastily into matrimony. Assuredly they should not. But after all, is it to be wondered at that so many of them do? Love is the law of life. The renewal of the race through the union of the sexes is an instinct which asserts itself in spite of code and thesis, and the institution of lawful wedlock is the bit by which civilization regulates it. Let us, says the modern scientist, isolate the degenerate members of society, the diseased, the vicious, and the improvident, and prevent them from having offspring. But still the priest of Rome, eager for fresh converts, but wise, too, in his knowledge of the law of sex, whispers to his flock "marry early," and adds under his breath, "lest ye sin." It is a part of religion, perhaps, for the daughters of the well-to-do, who have been screened from contact with the rough world, and who sit in judgment on several lovers in the paternal drawing-room, to weigh and ponder and to call in the brain to assist, or if needs be, silence the heart. Yet even they sometimes elope instead with the wrong man against whom they have been warned, and are unhappy--or happy--ever afterward. But when we turn from these privileged young persons--the pretty, daintily dressed young women in their Easter bonnets, who worship at our fashionable