and would not run the risk of making a fool of himself; not until
he was face to face with her could he pretend to decide upon any course
of action. But he had been tormented for ten weeks as he had never
expected to be tormented by any woman. Although he still assured himself
that he intended to marry her, the riot in his mind and blood bred
distrust of himself and evoked terrible images of Isabel at the altar
with another. He should hate to the day of his death the beautiful old
town of Santa Barbara, where he had been without any sort of refuge
from his thoughts; and in Washington, although he had managed to occupy
his mind and time profitably, there were still hours which he must spend
alone, and he had dreaded them.

And he was beset by other doubts than those of the mere lover. He was
conscious that in these weeks of absence and longing, he had idealized
Isabel, until the being he dwelt with in fancy was more goddess than
woman. He knew many sides of her, but much had eluded him, even after he
began to study her. That she was gifted in large measure with what the
Americans so aptly termed cussedness he had good reason to know; and
whether this very definite characteristic so far controlled her nature
as to hold her nobler qualities in durance----or were there nobler
qualities? She had brain and common-sense; both attributes had compelled
his respect long since. And she had character and pride--loyalty and
independence. He had had glimpses of what he would unhesitatingly have
accepted as heart and passion had he not known himself to be dazzled by
her beauty and wilful powers of fascination. That she was wholly
feminine, at least, he was convinced; she was too often absurdly so to
keep up, with any one that saw her constantly, the fiction of the
sexless philosopher. The very devil in her was of the unmistakable
feminine kidney. All this gave him hope, and he knew, that when caprice
permitted, she would be unrivalled as a companion. Intellectually, at
least, there was no thought of his she could not share and appreciate;
and her sense of humor and her feminine perversities would always
delight him. If only there were depths beneath. The longings of the
spirit are always formless, vaguely worded, a little shamefaced. Gwynne
hardly knew what was the great extreme he wanted in his wife, but he
knew that if he did not find it he should be miserable. He was by no
means the young man that had fallen blindly in love with Jul