It was so providential, if it was providential at all, that they were both humbly silent a moment; even Mrs.March was silent.

In this supreme moment she would not prompt her husband by a word, a glance, and it was from his own free will that he said, "We will take it." He thought it was his free will, but perhaps one's will is never free; and this may have been an instance of pure determinism from all the events before it.

No event that followed affected it, though the day after they had taken their passage on the Norumbia he heard that she had once been in the worst sort of storm in the month of August.

He felt obliged to impart the fact to his wife, but she said that it proved nothing for or against the ship, and confounded him more by her reason than by all her previous unreason.

Reason is what a man is never prepared for in women; perhaps because he finds it so seldom in men.
V.
During nearly the whole month that now passed before the date of sailing it seemed to March that in some familiar aspects New York had never been so interesting.