ooped and kissed her fragrant, animated
face. "I wish," said he, "I wish that you were not quite such a child."

The feeling of solitariness weighed upon his soul with a crushing weight
unknown until that day--the day of days, his wedding day. Heretofore he
had craved for solitude because it had been full of her imagined
companionship. Now that she actually lived and talked by his side, the
fancied image of her paled, vanished. The real creature was adorable,
but, for some reason, maddening, and not, at all events, the being of
his fancy. Their old relations--ethereal and exquisite, no doubt--now
seemed an empty mockery, self-deluding foolishness. He coloured at the
remembrance of all that Disraeli had hinted, and Reckage had brutally
declared, on the large topic of idealism in passion. A man, in spite of
all determinations to be uncomplaining, knows the How much and How
little that he may demand, merely as a man, from any given advantage or
disadvantage in existence. Robert, hating himself, condemning himself,
was conscious, in spite of himself, that Brigit's affection for him was
not love in the full human sense of the word. He had exchanged an
ordinary self-restraint for an impossibly false position. She could
inspire his life, but could she enter into it, be it, live it with him
daily? Would there not have to be great reservations, half statements,
and, worst of all, a subtle kind of hypocrisy? He reproached himself for
selfishness, yet the fear came and it remained. He had captured the
rainbow and married the goddess. Were there not many legends
illustrating this folly?--stories of men who had married divinities and
perished, not because the divinities were at fault, but because mortals
must wed with mortals. The sight of his wife's beauty caused a sudden,
violent irritation. He wished she had none, for then, perhaps, he
thought he would have been satisfied, more than content, in the placid
consideration of her charms of character. He found himself reduced to
the absurd predicament of deciding to banish her from his thoughts--a
last sophism which showed him, all too clearly, how wretched he was.
Their silence, which had been due in the first instance to the
sufficient delight of being in each other's company, became that long
pause which arises from an unutterable embarrassment. Brigit felt by
instinct some change in Robert's mood, but as she could not account for
it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air fill