Astra's light form being quickly lost behind the intervening foliage¹, Doctor Remy turned slowly and meditatively² toward his office; which, inasmuch as it had been built for the use and behoof of the late Doctor Lyte, possessed³ its own door of convenient communication with the garden.

Given opportunity, social equality, and a fine, unremitting tact⁵, and it would seem that any man can marry any woman, whose affections are free. Else, it would be hard to understand how Doctor Remy could have found his way into the heart of Astra Lyte; unless indeed, as is frequently the case, their very dissimilarity should have constituted a principle of attraction; character has its own laws of effective contrast. Astra was enthusiastic, generous, affectionate, with strong religious instincts and aspirations⁶; Doctor Remy was cold, selfish, austere⁷, without reverential sentiment, and, in matters of faith, an utter sceptic. But these traits need not be supposed to have exhibited themselves to Astra in their naked unloveliness. To her imagination, doubtless, they took the fairer form of a calm temperament⁸, and great force and firmness of character, allied⁹ to a keen and critical intellect; which last must needs be allowed to take its own appropriate time and road to belief (except as it seemed willing to owe something to her loving guidance). And Astra was of the age and character which are most prone¹⁰ to fall down and worship human intellect; failing, as yet, to understand that it is, in itself, of the earth earthy, and really noble and admirable only as it is enlightened by the spirit of God. She was dazzled and fascinated by the extent and variety of Doctor Remy's

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