A young man's dreams of the woman he will some day marry are apt to be meretricious, or at all events conventional. A young poet, especially, is likely to err in the direction of paragons of beauty, or fame, or romance. Perhaps he dreams of a great singer, or an illustrious beauty, ignorant of the natural law which makes great singers and illustrious beauties, in common with all artists, incapable of loving really any one but themselves. Or perhaps it will be some woman of great and exquisite culture. But chance knows that women of great and exquisite culture are usually beings lacking in those plastic elemental qualities which a poet, above all men, needs in the woman he shall love. Their very culture, while it may seem to broaden, really narrows them, limits them to a caste of mind, and, for an infinite suggestiveness, substitutes a few finite accomplishments. Critics without understanding have wondered now and again at attachments such as that of Heine for his Mathilde. Yet in some ways Mathilde was the type of wife best suited for a poet. She was just a wondering child, a bit of unspoiled chaos. She meant as little intellectually, and as much spiritually, as a wave of the sea, a bird of the air, a star in the sky. Another great poet always kept in his room a growing plant in a big tub of earth, and another tub full of fresh water. With the fire going, he used to say that he had the four elements within his four walls; and to people unaccustomed to talk with the elements these no doubt seemed dull and even remarkable companions,--like Heine's Mathilde. Now Angel, though far more than a goose intellectually, having, indeed, a very keen and subtle mind, was only secondarily intellectual, being primarily something far more important. You no more asked of her to be intellectual, than you expect a spirit to be mathematical. She was just a dream-child, thrilling with wonder and love before the strange world in which she had been mysteriously placed,--a dream-child and an excellent housewife in one, as full of common-sense on the one hand, as she was filled with fairy "nonsense" on the other. She was just, in fact, the wife for a poet. The interest taken in each other by Angel and the Man in Possession had not been unobserved by Angel's family. Her sisters had teased her considerably on the subject. "Why have you changed the way of wearing your hair, Angel?" they would say, "Does Mr. Mesurier like it that way?" or, "My word! we are getting smart and particular, now a certain gentleman has come into the office!" or again, "How small your writing is nowadays, Angel! What have you changed it for? I like your big old writing best; but I suppose--" and then they would retreat to a safe distance to finish--"Mr. Mesurier isn't of the same opinion!" Sometimes Esther would start in pursuit, and playful scrimmages would ensue, the hilarious uproar of which would turn poor Mrs. Flower's brain.