ual, if of unlike frailties'; an art that must be
mastered afresh, year by year: because life, as we know it, is rooted
in change; and if a husband and wife are not imperceptibly growing
towards one another, they are almost infallibly growing in the other
direction. But for the artist woman self-surrender is no natural
instinct: it is a talent to be consciously acquired, if she ever
acquire it at all: and although Quita had, in some sort, been through
the fire, she was still a novice in those 'profound and painless
lessons of love,' that can only be taught in the incomparable school of
marriage.

Meanwhile, she was learning her husband,--in his own phrase,--like a
new language; and enjoying the process, despite its undeniable
difficulty. For the man was by temperament inarticulate, and a
solitary: propensities aggravated by six years of bitterness, and
stifled passion. Let his love be never so deep and true, the spell of
isolation, the spirit that drives men into the wilderness, was as
strong in him as the need to share thought and feeling with the heart
nearest her own was in his wife. At no time could he have been classed
among the frankly unthinking men who slip into marriage as composedly
as they slip into a new suit of clothes: and at five-and-thirty, the
complete readjustment of life and habit demanded by this exquisite yet
exacting bond could not be arrived at without some degree of conscious
strain and compromise.

The past few weeks had revealed to both, more or less clearly, the 'sea
of contrarieties' through which they were called upon to steer without
capsizing; had brought them to that critical turning-point when the
first rapture of passion in possession subsides imperceptibly, into an
emotion deeper and more stable; when the insignificant outer world
resumes its normal proportions; and individuality reasserts itself,
often with disconcerting results!

Hence Quita's revived zeal to finish a picture begun and flung aside
months ago; and Eldred's unusually prompt response to a request from an
Editor friend in England for a set of articles on Tibet, whose holy of
holies had not then been unveiled and described for the benefit of
man's insatiable curiosity.

He was in his study now, finishing the first of them in time for the
homeward mail: unconsciously enjoying a return to the familiar
occupation. The writing of it had engrossed more of his mind and
leisure during the last week than Quita chose to