ghout the
country and is the national integrity, which may condone old sins for
present service; but will not have present sins to flout it. He was in
tune with the English character. The passion was in him nevertheless, and
the stronger for a slow growth that confirmed its union of the mind and
heart. Her counsel fortified him, her suggestions opened springs; her
phrases were golden-lettered in his memory; and more, she had worked an
extraordinary change in his views of life and aptitude for social
converse: he acknowledged it with genial candour. Through her he was
encouraged, led, excited to sparkle with the witty, feel new gifts, or a
greater breadth of nature; and thanking her, he became thirstily
susceptible to her dark beauty; he claimed to have found the key of her,
and he prized it. She was not passionless: the blood flowed warm. Proud,
chaste, she was nobly spirited; having an intellectual refuge from the
besiegings of the blood; a rockfortress. The 'wife no wife' appeared to
him, striking the higher elements of the man, the commonly masculine
also.--Would he espouse her, had he the chance?--to-morrow! this instant!
With her to back him, he would be doubled in manhood, doubled in brain
and heart-energy. To call her wife, spring from her and return, a man
might accept his fate to fight Trojan or Greek, sure of his mark on the
enemy.

But if, after all, this imputed Helen of a decayed Paris passed,
submissive to the legitimate solicitor, back to her husband?

The thought shot Dacier on his legs for a look at the blank behind him.
He vowed she had promised it should not be. Could it ever be, after the
ruin the meanly suspicious fellow had brought upon her?--Diana
voluntarily reunited to the treacherous cur?

He sat, resolving sombrely that if the debate arose he would try what
force he had to save her from such an ignominy, and dedicate his life to
her, let the world wag its tongue. So the knot would be cut.

Men unaccustomed to a knot in their system find the prospect of cutting
it an extreme relief, even when they know that the cut has an edge to
wound mortally as well as pacify. The wound was not heavy payment for the
rapture of having so incomparable a woman his own. He reflected
wonderingly on the husband, as he had previously done, and came again to
the conclusion that it was a poor creature, abjectly jealous of a wife,
he could neither master, nor equal, nor attract. And thinking of
jealousy, Dacier fe