fall
upon the paper. Then Ronald would take the pencils away, and Dora
would cling around his neck and ask him if he would not have been
happier with a cleverer wife.

"No, a thousand times, no," he would say; he loved Dora better in her
artless simplicity than he could have loved the cleverest woman in the
world.

"And you are quite sure," said Dora, "that you will never repent
marrying me?"

"No, again," was the reply. "You are the crowning joy of my life."

It was pleasant to sit amid the oleanders and myrtles, reading the
great poems of the world to Dora. Even if she did not understand them,
her face lighted with pleasure as the grand words came from Ronald's
lips. It was pleasant, too, to sit on the banks of the Arno, watching
the blue waters gleaming in the sun. Dora was at home there. She
would say little of books, of pictures, or music; but she could talk of
beautiful Nature, and never tire. She knew the changing colors of the
sky, the varied hues of the waves, the different voices of the wind,
the songs of the birds. All these had a separate and distinct meaning
for her.

Ronald could not teach her much more. She liked the beautiful poems he
read, but never could remember who had written them. She forgot the
names of great authors, or mixed them up so terribly that Ronald, in
despair, told her it would be better not to talk of books just yet--not
until she was more familiar with them.

But he soon found out that Dora could not read for many minutes
together. She would open her book, and make a desperate attempt; then
her dark eyes would wander away to the distant mountains, or to the
glistening river. She could never read while the sun shone or the
birds sang.

Seeing that, Ronald gave up all attempts at literature in the daytime;
when the lamps were lighted in the evening, and the fair face of Nature
was shut out, he tried again, and succeeded for ten minutes; then
Dora's eyes drooped, the white lids with their jetty fringe closed; and
with great dismay he found that over the masterpieces of the world Dora
had fallen asleep.

Two long, bright years had passed away before Ronald began to perceive
that he could educate his pretty young wife no further. She was a
strange mixture of ignorance and uncultivated poetry. She could speak
well; her voice was sweet, her accent, caught from him, good; alone he
never noticed any deficiencies, but if he met an English friend in
Florence and brought h