Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/173

 wife to the first place, where hitherto she herself had reigned supreme.

The unfortunate issue of his early love-affair had but tightened the bond between Utis and his mother, Zarene Palutha. Yet, anxious as he was to please her in every way, there was one matter in which he had been unable to gratify the longing of her heart. Having no daughter of her own, she was correspondingly anxious to experience the hitherto unknown pleasure arising from the tie that unites mother and daughter.

Utis had found, that, even with the best will, it is not always easy for a son to gratify a mother in this respect. He had met, indeed, in the course of his wanderings, many a fair girl whom he felt he could learn to love. But, in every case, they were already in the ranks of the zeruan. His mother's delight may, accordingly, be con ceived when, after she had almost resigned herself to seeing her son a confirmed bachelor, he sought and won the love of the loveliest viora of the season; for such Ulmene was acknowledged on all hands to be.

Nor had she to wait an undue time before she saw their union. Twenty-three was, indeed, the usual minimum age for the bride; while Ulmene was only seventeen when Utis returned. But, if the friends saw fit, it was allowable to count off one from the required number of birthdays of the bride for every two by which the groom's age exceeded the twenty-five legally required in his case. The chief reason for the requirement in respect to age being, to secure time for the due development of character before their entrance into a union practically indissoluble, the greater age and experience of the husband