and then he observes a few very plain facts, mostly relating to
Egeria, it is true. If it does come to anything, I hope he won't
ask her to live in a college settlement the year round, though I
haven't the slightest doubt that she would like it. If there were
ever two beings created expressly for each other, it is these two,
and for that reason I have my doubts about the matter. Almost all
marriages are made between two people who haven't the least thing
in common, so far as outsiders can judge. Egeria and Atlas are
almost too well suited for marriage."

The progress of the affair had thus far certainly been
astonishingly rapid, but it might mean nothing. Egeria's mind and
heart were so easy of access up to a certain point that the
traveller sometimes overestimated the distance covered and the
distance still to cover. Atlas quoted something about her at the
end of the very first day, that described her charmingly:
"Ordinarily, the sweetest ladies will make us pass through cold
mist and cross a stile or two, or a broken bridge, before the
formalities are cleared away, to grant us rights of citizenship.
She is like those frank lands where we have not to hand out a
passport at the frontier and wait for dubious inspection." But the
description is incomplete. Egeria, indeed, made no one wait at the
frontier for a dubious inspection of his passport; but once in the
new domain, while he would be cordially welcomed to parks, gardens,
lakes, and pleasure grounds, he would find unexpected difficulty in
entering the queen's private apartments, a fact that occasioned
surprise to some of the travellers.

We all took the greatest interest, too, in the romance of Phoebe
and Jem, for the course of true love did not run at all smooth for