If anything ever goes
wrong, it must be the husband's fault there: he can make her what he
likes--that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the little
darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so bewitching, he
wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser; those kittenlike glances and
movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise.
Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great
physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she
uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the
language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those
exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as
petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the
dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her
children! She is almost a child herself, and the little pink round
things will hang about her like florets round the central flower; and
the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able, whenever he chooses,
to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom, towards which his sweet
wife will look reverently, and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage
such as they made in the golden age, when the men were all wise and
majestic and the women all lovely and loving.
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