Ronald hoped that with time and attention she would be able to sketch, but Dora never managed it.

Obediently enough she took pencil and paper in her hands and tried, but the strokes would never come straight.

Sometimes the drawing she made would resemble something so comical that both she and Ronald laughed heartily; while the consciousness of her own inferiority grieved her, and large, bright tears would frequently fall upon the paper.

Then Ronald would take the pencils away, and Dora would cling around his neck and ask him if he would not have been happier with a cleverer wife.
"No, a thousand times, no," he would say; he loved Dora better in her artless simplicity than he could have loved the cleverest woman in the world.
"And you are quite sure," said Dora, "that you will never repent marrying me ?" "No, again," was the reply.

"You are the crowning joy of my life." It was pleasant to sit amid the oleanders and myrtles, reading the great poems of the world to Dora.