Cecily would be happy with anybody who made her comfortable.

You would ask a good deal more than that, you know.' Dacres, at this, took me up promptly.

Life, he said, the heart of life, had particularly little to say to temperament.

By the heart of life I suppose he meant married love.

He explained that its roots asked other sustenance, and that it throve best of all on simple elemental goodness.
So long as a man sought in women mere casual companionship, perhaps the most exquisite thing to be experienced was the stimulus of some spiritual feminine counterpart; but when he desired of one woman that she should be always and intimately with him, the background of his life, the mother of his children, he was better advised to avoid nerves and sensibilities, and try for the repose of the common--the uncommon--domestic virtues.