Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/155

Rh It is a fact patent to every one, that the further we recede from an object, the smaller it appears. For instance, the dome of St. Paul's when we stand in St. Paul's Churchyard, looks immense. But as we stand on Paul's Wharf, waiting for a steamer, we always discover that the small intervening distance has diminished the dome to the size of a dish-cover. As we descend the river, the cupola decreases in proportion as we widen our distance from it, till it is reduced to an inconsiderable speck, and finally sinks beyond the range of our vision. It is precisely the same with our faults. At the moment of their commission, from under their shadow, they look portentous and actually oppress us; but they become sensibly reduced in bulk the farther we drift down life's stream from them. What immeasurably weighed on us yesterday, measurably burden us to-day, and to-morrow are perceptible; but the day after cease to discomfort us. Not so only, but as we draw further from our past fault, we look back on it with a sort of fond admiration, tinged with sadness; we lounge over the bulwarks of our boat, opera-glass in hand, and consider it as we consider the dome of St. Paul's, as an adjunct not altogether regrettable in the retrospect; for, consider how uniform, how insufferable would be the landscape, without breaks in the sky line.

Now Mrs. Saltren was embarked on the same voyage with Stephen, her husband, and naturally expected that the same object which at one moment had obscured their sun, but which rapidly diminished in size and importance and signification to her eyes, should equally tend to disappear from his. When, however, she found that it did not, she was offended, and harboured the conviction that she was herself the injured party. Why were not Stephen's eyes constituted as the eyes of other men? She had good occasion to take umbrage at the perversity of his vision. She had admitted at one time, faintly, and with a graceful curtsey, a pretty apology, and with that reluctance which a