"My darling," he says. "Every woman says that of the man she loves, and every man of the woman. I think you are hard upon poor Keith. Fancy, to love a woman with all one's heart and soul, and know she can be nothing to one. Ah heaven! how fatal a thing is marriage sometimes--how _sure_ one ought to be of oneself before entering into a life-long union." "_We_ are sure!" she murmurs, softly nestling closer in his arms, as they stand side by side in the twilight shadows. "Thank God, we are!" he says, with passionate earnestness. "But often and often I think, if it had not been for the sins and follies of the past--for the wrong and the suffering--our love would never have been as deep and intense a thing as it is. I shall never forget those years, and how hopelessly our lives seemed severed--with what reluctance I came home to England--how I dreaded to hear you were another's--and then----" "After all I was your own," she whispers. "And we are so happy," he resumes presently. "Are we not, my queen of æsthetes?" She laughs a little tremulously. "Indeed, yes; but I fear, dearest, the queen has sadly neglected her subjects. Women's missions are all very well until men interfere with them. Then there is a lamentable failure of all the grand schemes and projects." "A woman's first mission is to love her husband and make his home a paradise," answers Colonel Carlisle. "I am not great at poetry, as you know, but I own to an admiration of those lines of Tennyson in 'The Princess.' You know them: For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse; could we make her as the man Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference. Yet in the long years liker must they grow-- The man be more of woman, she of man. * * * * * Till at the last she sets herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words." "Yes," she says. "They are very true, although a man wrote them." "Don't you believe our sex understands yours, then?" he asks teasingly. "No; I do not," she says decidedly. "I think no man yet ever quite comprehended a woman's nature, any more, perhaps, than we comprehend a man's. I think that is how we so often mistake and misjudge each other. We expect a man to act as we would act, and he expects us to act as he would; and that can never be. Another thing: we have such quick instincts, and are governed so often by sympathy or antipathy; you are slow in your judgment, and _reason_ where we act." "Yes," he answers thoughtfully; "but contrast is the salt of life, my darling. We should not find any attraction in each other if we were quite alike, and regulated our lives and actions on the same principles. But to return to our subject. I am certain Lady Jean is up to some mischief, and I would give anything in the world to get Keith Athelstone away from her influence. What _can_ possess him to be always there?"