ess in her newborn
happiness, and to cast round her a magical charm.

Seen together, the lovers offered a piquant contrast. Both were tall,
both walked well, and carried themselves with ease and dignity; but her
face was a long oval, his short; her eyes were large and lustrous, his
small and deep-set. In Theresa's face, the fine, straight nose, the
voluptuous mouth, the nobly modelled chin, the cheeks that curved so
exquisitely, framed in their border of night-black hair, compelled
universal admiration; but Mansana, with his low brows, his thin,
tight-locked lips, obstinate square jaw, and close-cropped wiry hair,
was hardly accepted as a handsome man. Striking, too, was the contrast
between her undisguised happiness and brilliant gaiety, and his laconic
reserve. Yet neither she nor his friends would have wished him
different, even in those days; for this reserve was characteristic of
him. Matters on which he would have staked his life were turned by him
into mere every-day commonplaces, when he permitted himself to talk of
them.

But as a rule, he hardly talked at all; and so neither Theresa nor
their fashionable acquaintances observed that at this time--in the very
crisis of his happiness--a great change was coming over him.

There is a kind of boundless submission, a jealous desire to serve and
minister to a lover, which may convert its object into a slave or a
sort of powerless chattel, since it leaves him without a moment's
freedom or a fragment of independence. He has but to express a casual
wish, and instantly a dozen new plans are broached to secure what he is
supposed to desire, and he is overwhelmed by a perfect storm of
affectionate discussion. Then, too, there is that species of
confidential intimacy, which works its way into the very guarded and
secret chambers of the soul, which divines hidden motives and brings
into the light the most cherished private thoughts; and this is apt to
be embarrassing enough to a man accustomed to live his own life locked
in his own ideas.

Such was now the case with Mansana. In the course of a few days he
began to be affected by a sense of satiety; an intense exhaustion fell
upon him, in the reaction from the alternate transports of despair and
happiness through which he had lately passed, and added to his nervous
irritability. There were moments when he shrank, not only from general
society but from Theresa herself. He suffered the keenest self-reproach
for what seemed