Miriam Trent would have thought had she learned that her bridegroom
waived all comparison between herself and the cross only because it was
unattainable, one may hardly surmise. But as a sensible person who
already knew John's foible and was accustomed to making allowances, she
possibly would have been amused and just a bit relieved. She was
everything that he was not. Where one passion absorbed him, she gave
herself gladly to many interests and duties. A second mother to her
numerous small brothers and sisters, and to her amiable inefficient
father as well, she had somehow managed school and college for herself,
and in accepting John and his worldly goods she gave up a decently paid
library position. The insides of books were also familiar to her, in
impersonal concerns she had a shrewd sense of people, in general she
faced the world with a brave and delicate assurance. Finally she believed
with fervour the creed and ethics that John happened to inculcate every
week, and it is to be feared that she took him for a prophet of
righteousness. Armed at all points that did not involve her personal
interests, there was she peculiarly vulnerable. She must have accepted
John, aside from the glamour of his edifying articles, simply because of
his evident and plaintively reasserted need of her.

Yet they were very happy together, as people who marry on this unequal
basis often are. After their panoramic week at Niagara, along the St.
Lawrence, and home by the two lakes and the Hudson, they settled down in
John's room, which by the addition of two more had been promoted to being
the living room of an apartment. Her few personal possessions made a
timid, tolerated appearance between his gilt Buddhas and pewter jugs. But
she herself queened it easily over the bizarre possessions now become
hers. Had you seen her of an evening, alert, fragile, golden under the
lamp, and had you seen John's vague glance turn from a moongrey row of
Korean bowls to her deeper eyes, you would have been convinced not merely
that he regarded her as the finest object in his collection, but also
that he was right. It would be intrusive to dwell upon the joys and
sorrows of light housekeeping in New York on a small income. Enough to
say that the joys preponderated in this case. They read much together, he
gradually cultivated an awkward acquaintance with her friends--he had
practically none, and at times she made the rounds of the curiosity shops
and auctions