“Yes,” returned Eveena, “and I watched your face while Enva spoke.  How did you like her doctrine?  Of course you may do as you please—­if you can please.  You may silence discontent, you may suppress spiteful innuendos and even sulky looks, you may put down mutiny, by sheer terror.  Can you?  You may command me to go with you whenever you go out; you may take the same means to make me complain of unkindness as to make them conceal it; you may act like one of our own people, if you can stoop to the level of their minds.  But we both know that you can do nothing of the kind.  How could you bear to be driven into unsparing and undeserved severity, who can hardly bring yourself to enforce the discipline necessary to peace and comfort on those who will only be ruled by fear and would like you better if they feared you more?  Did you hear the proverb Leenoo muttered, very unjustly, when she left your room yesterday, ’A favourite wears out many sandals’?  No!  You see the very phrase wounds and disgusts you.  But you would find it a true one.  Can you take vengeance for a fault you have yourself provoked?  Can you decide without inquiry, condemn without evidence, punish without hearing?  Men do these things, of course, and women expect them.  But you—­I do not say you would be ashamed so to act—­you cannot do it, any more than you can breathe the air of our snow-mountains.”

“At all events, Eveena, I no more dare do it in your presence than I dare forswear the Faith we hold in common.”

But whatever Eveena might exact or I concede, the distinction between the wife who commanded as much respect as affection, and the girls who could at best be pets or playthings, was apparent against our will in every detail of daily life and domestic intercourse.  It was alike impossible to treat Eveena as a child and to rule Enva or Eirale as other than children.  It was as unnatural to use the tone of command or rebuke to one for whom my unexpressed wishes were absolute law, as to observe the form of request or advice in directing or reproving those whose obedience depended on the consequences of rebellion.  It only made matters worse that the distinction corresponded but too accurately to their several deserts.  No faults could have been so irritating to Eveena’s companions as her undeniable faultlessness.

The ludicrous aspect of my relation to the rest of the household was even more striking than I had expected.  That I should find myself in the absurd position of a man entrusted with the direct personal government of half-a-dozen young ladies was even “more truly spoke than meant.”  One at least among them might singly have made in time a not unlovable wife, and all, perhaps, might severally and separately have been reduced to conjugal complaisance.  Collectively, they were, as Eveena had said, a set of school-girls, and school-girls used to stricter restraint and much sharper discipline than those of a French or Italian convent.  They would have made life a burden to