He required another and a wholly different one to be the complement of his own.

Olive came as near it as a sister could, but--we must borrow an old image--moonlight is no more than a cold and vacant glimmer on the sun-dial, which only answers to the great flaming orb of day.

If Cyprian could but find some true, sweet-tempered, well-balanced woman, richer in feeling than in those special imaginative gifts which made the outward world at times unreal to him in the intense reality of his own inner life, how he could enrich and adorn her existence,--how she could direct and chasten and elevate the character of all his thoughts and actions! "Bathsheba," said Olive, "it seems to me that Cyprian is getting more and more fascinated with Myrtle Hazard.

He has never got over the fancy he took to her when he first saw her in her red jacket, and called her the fire-hang-bird.

Wouldn't they suit each other by and by, after Myrtle has come to herself and grown into a beautiful and noble woman, as I feel sure she will in due time ?" "Myrtle is very lovely," Bathsheba answered, "but is n't she a little too--flighty--for one like your brother?
Cyprian isn't more like other young men than Myrtle is like other young girls.