Thelma. "They know so very little,--and
they are taught so badly! I think they never do quite understand what
they do want,--they are the same in all histories,--like little
children, they get bewildered and frightened in any trouble, and the
wisest heads are needed to think for them. It is, indeed, most cruel to
make them puzzle out all difficulty for themselves!"

"What a little sage you are, my pet!" laughed Philip, taking her hand on
which the marriage-ring and its accompanying diamond circlet, glistened
brilliantly in the warm sunlight. "Do you mean to go in for politics?"

She shook her head. "No, indeed! That is not woman's work at all. The
only way in which I think about such things, is that I feel the people
cannot all be wise,--and that it seems a pity the wisest and greatest in
the land should not be chosen to lead them rightly."

"And so under the circumstances, you think it's no use my trying to
_pose_ as a Cicero?" asked her husband amusedly. She laughed--with a
very tender cadence in her laughter.

"It would not be worth your while, my boy," she said "You know I have
often told you that I do not see any great distinction in being a member
of Parliament at all. What will you do? You will talk to the fat brewer
perhaps, and he will contradict you--then other people will get up and
talk and contradict each other,--and so it will go on for days and
days--meanwhile the country remains exactly as it was, neither better
nor worse,--and all the talking does no good! It is better to be out of
it,--here together, as we are to-day."

And she raised her dreamy blue eyes to the sheltering canopy of green
leaves that overhung them--leaves thick-clustered and dewy, through
which the dazzling sky peeped in radiant patches. Philip looked at
her,--the rapt expression of her upward gaze,--the calm, untroubled
sweetness of her fair face,--were such as might well have suited one of
Raffaelle's divinest angels. His heart beat quickly--he drew closer to
her, and put his arm round her.

"Your eyes are looking at the sky, Thelma," he whispered. "Do you know
what that is? Heaven looking into heaven! And do you know which of the
two heavens I prefer?" She smiled, and turning, met his ardent gaze with
one of equal passion and tenderness.

"Ah, you _do_ know!" he went on, softly kissing the side of her slim
white throat. "I thought you couldn't possibly make a mistake!" He
rested his head against her shoulder, and after a min