laughter-loving and noisy. She seemed to be crushed by them; no one
noticed her, and she seemed to wish to escape even what little notice she
attracted. If Melchior had been a kind-hearted man, it would have been
credible that he should prefer Louisa's simple goodness to every other
advantage; but a vainer man never was. It seemed incredible that a young
man of his kidney, fairly good-looking, and quite conscious of it, very
foolish, but not without talent, and in a position to look for some
well-dowered match, and capable even--who knows?--of turning the head of
one of his pupils among the people of the town, should suddenly have chosen
a girl of the people--poor, uneducated, without beauty, a girl who could in
no way advance his career.

But Melchior was one of those men who always do the opposite of what is
expected of them and of what they expect of themselves. It is not that they
are not warned--a man who is warned is worth two men, says the proverb.
They profess never to be the dupe of anything, and that they steer their
ship with unerring hand towards a definite point. But they reckon without
themselves, for they do not know themselves. In one of those moments of
forgetfulness which are habitual with them they let go the tiller, and, as
is natural when things are left to themselves, they take a naughty pleasure
in rounding on their masters. The ship which is released from its course at
once strikes a rock, and Melchior, bent upon intrigue, married a cook. And
yet he was neither drunk nor in a stupor on the day when he bound himself
to her for life, and he was not under any passionate impulse; far from it.
But perhaps there are in us forces other than mind and heart, other even
than the senses--mysterious forces which take hold of us in the moments
when the others are asleep; and perhaps it was such forces that Melchior
had found in the depths of those pale eyes which had looked at him so
timidly one evening when he had accosted the girl on the bank of the river,
and had sat down beside her in the reeds--without knowing why--and had