But here she stopped.  There was nothing to be said against Mr. Lurton, or against her accepting the offered happiness.  She would then lead the quiet, peaceful life of a village-minister’s wife who does her duty to her husband and her neighbors.  Her generous nature found pleasure in the thought of all the employments that would fill her heart and hands.  How much better it would be to have a home, and to have others to work for, than to lead the life of a stranger in other people’s houses!  And then she blushed, and was happy at the thought that there would be children’s voices in the house—­little stockings in the basket on a Saturday night—­there would be the tender cares of the mother.  How much better was such a life than a lonely one!

It was not until some hours of such thinking—­of more castle-building than the sober-spirited girl had done in her whole life before—­that she became painfully conscious that in all this dreaming of her future as the friend of the parishioners and the house-mother, Lurton himself was a figure in the background of her thoughts.  He did not excite any enthusiasm in her heart.  She took up her paper; she read over again the reasons why she ought to love Lurton.  But though reason may chain Love and forbid his going wrong, all the logic in the world can not make him go where he will not.  She had always acted as a most rational creature.  Now, for the first time, she could not make her heart go where she would.  Love in such cases seems held back by intuition, by a logic so high and fine that its terms can not be stated.  Love has a balance-sheet in which all is invisible except the totals.  I have noticed that practical and matter-of-fact women are most of all likely to be exacting and ideal in love affairs.  Or, is it that this high and ideal way of looking at such affairs is only another manifestation of practical wisdom?

Certain it is, that though Isa found it impossible to set down a single reason for not loving so good a man with the utmost fervor, she found it equally impossible to love him with any fervor at all.

Then she fell to pitying Lurton.  She could make him happy and help him to be useful, and she thought she ought to do it.  But could she love Lurton better than she could have loved any other man?  Now, I know that most marriages are not contracted on this basis.  It is not given to every one to receive this saying.  I am quite aware that preaching on this subject would be vain.  Comparatively few people can live in this atmosphere.  But noblesse oblige—­noblesse does more than oblige—­and Isa Marlay, against all her habits of acting on practical expediency, could not bring herself to marry the excellent Lurton without a consciousness of moral descending, while she could not give herself a single satisfactory reason for feeling so.

It went hard with Lurton.  He had been so sure of divine approval and guidance that he had not counted failure possible.  But at such times the man of trustful and serene habit has a great advantage.  He took the great disappointment as a needed spiritual discipline; he shouldered this load as he had carried all smaller burdens, and went on his way without a murmur.