gain, somewhere."

"I don't believe she ever wished it."

"A man can't tell what a woman wishes."

"Well, neither can a woman," returned Basil, lightly.

His wife remained serious. "It was a very fine point,--a very little
thing to reject a man for. I felt that when I first read her letter about
it."

Basil yawned. "I don't believe I ever knew just what the point was."

"Oh yes, you did; but you forget everything. You know that they met two
Boston ladies just after they were engaged, and she believed that he did
n't introduce her because he was ashamed of her countrified appearance
before them."

"It was a pretty fine point," said Basil, and he laughed provokingly.

"He might not have meant to ignore her," answered Isabel thoughtfully;
"he might have chosen not to introduce her because he felt too proud of
her to subject her to any possible misappreciation from them. You might
have looked at it in that way."

"Why didn't you look at it in that way? You advised her against giving
him another chance. Why did you?"

"Why?" repeated Isabel, absently. "Oh, a woman does n't judge a man by
what he does, but by what he is! I knew that if she dismissed him it was
because she never really had trusted or could trust his love; and I
thought she had better not make another trial."

"Well, very possibly you were right. At any rate, you have the
consolation of knowing that it's too late to help it now."

"Yes, it's too late," said Isabel; and her thoughts went back to her
meeting with the young girl whom she had liked so much, and whose after
history had interested her so painfully. It seemed to her a hard world
that could come to nothing better than that for the girl whom she had
seen in her first glimpse of it that night. Where was she now? What had
become of her? If she had married that man, would she have been any
happier? Marriage was not the poetic dream of perfect union that a girl
imagines it; she herself had found that out. It was a state of trial, of
probation; it was an ordeal, not an ecstasy. If she and Basil had broken
each other's hearts and parted, would not the fragments of their lives
have been on a much finer, much higher plane? Had not the commonplace,
every-day experiences of marriage vulgarized them both? To be sure, there
were the children; but if they had never had the children, she would
never have missed them; and if Basil had, for example, died just before
they were married--She started from thi