of family or social standing, so circumstanced that any friend would
have warned him against such a marriage; but he had given her his
heart, and his hand, and his house, and had asked for nothing in
return but that he should be all in all to her, that he should be
her one god upon earth. And he had done more even than this. 'Bring
your sister,' he had said. 'The house shall be big enough for her
also, and she shall be my sister as well as yours.' Who had ever
done more for a woman, or shown a more absolute confidence? And
now what was the return he received? She was not contented with her
one god upon earth, but must make to herself other gods--another
god, and that too out of a lump of the basest clay to be found
around her. He thought that he could remember to have heard it said
in early days, long before he himself had had an idea of marrying,
that no man should look for a wife from among the tropics, that
women educated amidst the languors of those sunny climes rarely
came to possess those high ideas of conjugal duty and feminine
truth which a man should regard as the first requisites of a good
wife. As he thought of all this, he almost regretted that he had
ever visited the Mandarins, or ever heard the name of Sir Marmaduke
Rowley.

He should have nourished no such thoughts in his heart. He had,
indeed, been generous to his wife and to his wife's family; but we
may almost say that the man who is really generous in such matters
is unconscious of his own generosity. The giver who gives the most,
gives, and does not know that he gives. And had not she given too?
In that matter of giving between a man and his wife, if each gives
all, the two are equal, let the things given be what they may!
King Cophetua did nothing for his beggar maid, unless she were to
him, after he had married her, as royal a queen as though he had