“But their inconsistency at times wars with your assertions.”

“No; it is sterner stuff that reasons most; they are nicer in their perceptions, and feel instinctively their way into questions over which we work and solve alone by long reasoning.”

“I believe it is so.”

“Then you have advanced one step.  We cannot appreciate woman too highly.  That many do foolish things is no proof that many are not wise and good, bearing crosses day after day which would make you and I ready to lie down and die-they ever do great things, either good or bad, and men, I hope, will some day place her image next to his maker’s, and look upon it as to him the holiest and highest on earth-the best gift of God.”

“Why, Hugh, you are wild upon this subject.”

“I am awake, and hope I shall never slumber.”

“Your words have given me rest, and stirred my best emotions.  I will write to Mabel to-night.  But yesterday and I felt that all women were as fickle as these waters.  I am changed, and your remarks have caused me to think differently.

“I have not changed your mind, I have only brought some of your better feelings to the surface.”

“And what is that but change?”

“It may be, that it is.  Do you not see that something mightier than yourself brought you here, where your morbid feelings will pass away,—­though I do not wonder that you felt as you did, neither can I blame you.  The human soul has many sides, and turns slowly to the light.”

“If I had your penetration, I could bear the discords of life.”

“We must learn not only to bear them, but to gather wisdom from their teachings.  If we cannot grow under to-day’s trial, we surely cannot under to-morrow’s.”

“I begin to feel that we shall both be better for this estrangement.”

“You will, and come together, on a higher plane.  Married people live in such close relations that each becomes absorbed by the other, and then having nothing fresh to give, what was once attraction becomes repulsion.  I see these things so plainly myself that the criticism, and may be, censure of a multitude, jealous of personal freedom, affects me no more than the passing breeze.  I know that if I stand upon a mount and behold a beautiful scene beyond, that it is there, although the people below may declare with positiveness that it is not.  A man knows nothing of the value of his wife who sees not other women and learns their thoughts.”

“True.  I have felt for a long time that I needed a fresh mind with which to hold converse, and my seeking one, although accidental, has brought about this state of things.”

“And that person?”

“Was Miss Evans.”