“You know they don’t, Miss Innocence. The book of life has been open before you, and you have read it, young as you are. Likewise endless novels, I fancy, like all girls.”
“But if a woman is a man’s wife, that makes him feel—well, I don’t know how,” said Nina, with a puzzled air.
“A man will stand by his wife because he is a born egotist. She belongs to him—is a part of him. He puts up with her faults because she has the honour of bearing his name.”
“My husband loves me because I am myself,” whispered the girl against the book that she put up to her cheek, “not because I am his wife. He is a very good man.”
CHAPTER XIII.
A LITTLE IDLE WORD.
“What a delicious evening!” Side by side, a few hours later, Miss Marsden and Nina knelt on a couch in a tiny ladies’ cabin on deck, looking out through the open window at the long, undulating line of light playing over the surface of the sunlit waves.
“How indescribably beautiful it is,” went on Miss Marsden, softly.
“‘I long to tread that path of golden rays,