"But I don't," Dorris replied. "The more I know of you the better I like you. It's not usual, but I am more in love after marriage than I was before."
"I have mingled so little with women," the wife said seriously, "that I sometimes fear that I am not like others of my sex in manners and dress and inclination. Did you ever notice it?"
"I think I have," he said.
She turned upon him with mock fierceness, and pretended to be very indignant.
"Because you are not like other women, who act by rule, and are nearly all alike, is the reason I have no greater ambition than to be tied to your apron-strings," he said. "I think your freshness and originality are your greatest charms."
"Long before I ever thought of becoming a wife myself," she said, seriously again, "I noticed that most men seemed to lack a knowledge of women; that they regarded them as angels while they were girls, and were disappointed because they turned out to be women as wives. I am not unjust, but I have thought the women were partly responsible for this, since many of them exhibit themselves like dolls, and pretend to be more than they are. This is the reason why I am pleased that you are not disappointed in me."
"As to your being an angel," he laughingly replied, "I know you are not one, and I am glad of it. I have an idea that an angel would soon tire of me, and fly away in disgust, to warn its companions that men were not worth saving. There are some women so amiable that no matter to what extent their affairs go wrong, they cannot muster up enough energetic regret to cause them to supply a remedy. I am not so fond of amiability as to desire it at that price. Whenever you find capacity you will find temper, and I imagine that it would be dangerous to stir you up, for you are as capable a woman as ever I knew. Haven't you temper?"
"Plenty of it; too much," she answered.
They both laughed at this frank confession, and Dorris took occasion to say that there was not a spark of it in his nature, though there was temper written in every line of his countenance, and that he would have been an ugly man when once fully aroused was certain.
They walked on again, and the shadow followed, as if anxious to hear what they were saying.