The good thing, the glorious thing, was that he had her his. She was Mrs. RoBards now, and she was asleep against his arm. The harsh ruts of the road jolting her tender body kept her bosom tremulous as a heap of white hyacinths fluttered by a soft breeze of summer. With the rocking of the carriage her velvet cheek slid up and down on his shoulder. He was startled to note at length that his sleeve was pink and her inner cheek whiter than the other. So she powdered and painted! And he had never known it! He would have said that only the wantons that crowded the town or the shameless flirts were discontent to leave their skins as God made them. Yet his own bride—but—she was a wife now. She would be a mother in time. And she would have no temptations to vanity henceforth. He studied her a little closelier, as if, in marrying her, he had indeed taken her from beneath the veil of romance into the keen sunlight of truth. The delicate forehead had never a wrinkle, even between the eyebrows of such delicate penmanship. If she had thought hard and fiercely on the problems of life and religion and natural philosophy, there would have been lines there. Well, one did not marry a woman for her wisdom. But what sorry tortures she endured to make herself a doll! She denied herself not only the glory of flight in the realms of thought, but even the privileges of motion. She was the voluntary prisoner—as Fanny Kemble would say—of “tight stays, tight garters, tight sleeves, tight waistbands, tight armholes, and tight bodices.” She took no exercise, wore veils and handkerchiefs to ward off the glare, and preferred to sit in the dark till the sun was gone, lest it brown her pallor. Yet she went in little flat satin slippers through the snow, and bared her shoulders to icy winds that made a man huddle in his heaviest fear-naught. But her foolishness somehow made her all the more fragile, all the more needful of gentle dealing. And he loved her pitiably. She was still asleep when he made out from a hilltop the spires of the ancient courthouse, and the new academy in the half-shire village of White Plains. RoBards wanted to tell his wife that she need not be lonely out here, for she would be only a few miles from this lively community, already containing several hundred people, a boys’ school, and a newspaper. But he let her sleep, fearing that, after all, she might not be impressed. She slept past the great sight of this region, Washington’s old headquarters, only to wake a little later as the carriage was flung and whipped about in a road of particular barbarity. “Where are we, Mist’ RoBards?” she cried, and gasped to learn how far they had driven. He watched her wild little glances with fascination. She seemed to flirt and coquet with the very landscape.