lacking in passion, and Katharine, as she read the pages through
again, could see in what direction her feelings ought to flow,
supposing they revealed themselves. She would come to feel a humorous
sort of tenderness for him, a zealous care for his susceptibilities,
and, after all, she considered, thinking of her father and mother,
what is love?

Naturally, with her face, position, and background, she had experience
of young men who wished to marry her, and made protestations of love,
but, perhaps because she did not return the feeling, it remained
something of a pageant to her. Not having experience of it herself,
her mind had unconsciously occupied itself for some years in dressing
up an image of love, and the marriage that was the outcome of love,
and the man who inspired love, which naturally dwarfed any examples
that came her way. Easily, and without correction by reason, her
imagination made pictures, superb backgrounds casting a rich though
phantom light upon the facts in the foreground. Splendid as the waters
that drop with resounding thunder from high ledges of rock, and plunge
downwards into the blue depths of night, was the presence of love she
dreamt, drawing into it every drop of the force of life, and dashing
them all asunder in the superb catastrophe in which everything was
surrendered, and nothing might be reclaimed. The man, too, was some
magnanimous hero, riding a great horse by the shore of the sea. They
rode through forests together, they galloped by the rim of the sea.
But waking, she was able to contemplate a perfectly loveless marriage,
as the thing one did actually in real life, for possibly the people
who dream thus are those who do the most prosaic things.

At this moment she was much inclined to sit on into the night,
spinning her light fabric of thoughts until she tired of their