I cannot bear to distress his mother, yet how can I tell him that I literally believe those quaint old fables?
_Solvetur vivendo_, of course, like everything else, but just now it worries me a little.

Generally I can see a pretty clear line of duty; here the duty is divided, with a vengeance.

Have you any counsel ?' Harvey Rolfe mumbled impatiently; all domestic matters were a trial to his nerves.

It seemed to him an act of unaccountable folly to marry a woman from whom one differed diametrically on subjects that lay at the root of life; and of children he could hardly bring himself to think at all, so exasperating the complication they introduced into social problems which defied common-sense.

He disliked children; fled the sight and the sound of them in most cases, and, when this was not possible, regarded them with apprehension, anxiety, weariness, anything but interest.