Where was the sense of infusing into another being the black drop of discontent that poisoned his own?
A daughter perhaps--with the eyes of his mad sister Alice?
Or a son--with the contradictions and weaknesses, without the gifts, of his father?
Men have different ways of challenging the future.

But that particular way called paternity had never in his most optimistic moments appealed to Manisty.
And of course Eleanor understood him! He had not been ungrateful.

No!--he knew well enough that he had the power to make a woman's hours pass pleasantly.

Eleanor's winter had been a happy one; her health and spirits had alike revived.

Friendship, as they had known it, was a very rare and exquisite thing.