iddled. She and the law differed in their
interpretation of the dues of wedlock.

But matters referring to her case were secondary with Diana beside the
importance of her storing impressions. Her mind required to hunger for
something, and this Reality which frequently she was forced to loathe,
she forced herself proudly to accept, despite her youthfulness. Her
philosophy swallowed it in the lump, as the great serpent his meal; she
hoped to digest it sleeping likewise. Her visits of curiosity to the Law
Courts, where she stood spying and listening behind a veil, gave her a
great deal of tough substance to digest. There she watched the process of
the tortures to be applied to herself, and hardened her senses for the
ordeal. She saw there the ribbed and shanked old skeleton world on which
our fair fleshly is moulded. After all, your Fool's Paradise is not a
garden to grow in. Charon's ferry-boat is not thicker with phantoms. They
do not live in mind or soul. Chiefly women people it: a certain class of
limp men; women for the most part: they are sown there. And put their
garden under the magnifying glass of intimacy, what do we behold? A world
not better than the world it curtains, only foolisher.

Her conversations with Lady Dunstane brought her at last to the point of
her damped enthusiasm. She related an incident or two occurring in her
career of independence, and they discussed our state of civilization
plainly and gravely, save for the laughing peals her phrases occasionally
provoked; as when she named the intruders and disturbers of
solitarily-faring ladies, 'Cupid's footpads.' Her humour was created to
swim on waters where a prescribed and cultivated prudery should pretend
to be drowning.

'I was getting an exalted idea of English gentlemen, Emmy. "Rich and rare
were the gems she wore." I was ready to vow that one might traverse the
larger island similarly respected. I praised their chivalry. I thought it
a privilege to live in such a land. I cannot describe to you how
delightful it was to me to walk out and home generally protected. I might
have been seriously annoyed but that one of the clerks-"articled," he
called himself--of our lawyers happened to be by. He offered to guard me,
and was amusing with his modest tiptoe air. No, I trust to the English
common man more than ever. He is a man of honour. I am convinced he is
matchless in any other country, except Ireland. The English gentleman
trades on his reputation