be loving and
sensible at once and always--and there does sometimes form itself the
beginning of a certain estrangement. This probably would not have
happened in the case of the Sarrasins, but certainly if they had had
children Mrs. Sarrasin would no longer have been able to pad about the
round world wherever her husband was pleased to ask her to accompany
him. If in her heart there were now and again some yearnings for a
child, some pangs of regret that a child had not been given to her or
left with her, she always found ready consolation in the thought that
she could not have been so much to her husband had the Fates imposed on
her the sweet and loving care of children.

The means of the Sarrasins were limited; but still more limited were
their wants. She had a small income--he had a small income--the two
incomes put together did not come to very much. But it was enough for
the Sarrasins; and few married couples of middle age ever gave
themselves less trouble about money. They were able to go abroad and
join some foreign enterprise whenever they felt called that way, and,
poor as he was, Sarrasin was understood to have helped with his purse
more than one embarrassed cause or needy patriot. The chief ornaments
and curios of their house were weapons of all kinds, each with some
story labelled on to it. Captain Sarrasin displayed quite a collection
of the uniforms he had worn in many a foreign army and insurgent band,
and of the decorations he had received and doubtless well earned. Mrs.
Sarrasin, for her part, could show anyone with whom she cared to be
confidential a variety of costumes in which she had disguised herself,
and in which she had managed either to escape from some danger, or, more
likely yet, to bring succour of some sort to others who were in danger.

Mrs. Sarrasin was a woman of good family--a family in the veins of which
flowed much wild blood. Some of the men had squandered everything early,
and then gone away and made adventurers of themselves here and there.
Certain of these had never returned to civilisation again. With the
women the wild strain took a different line. One became an explorer, one
founded a Protestant sisterhood for woman's missionary labour, and
diffused itself over India, and Thibet, and Burmah, and other places. A
third lived with her husband in perpetual yachting--no one on board but
themselves and the crew. A steady devotion to some one object which had
nothing to do with the co