ittering eye," or as many as he
could sweep with his glance. "I suppose that the greatest hypocrite at
this table, where we are all so frankly hypocrites together, will not
deny that marriage is the prime cause of divorce. In fact, divorce
couldn't exist without it."

The women all looked bewilderedly at one another, and then appealingly
at the men. None of these answered directly, but the bachelor softly
intoned out of Gilbert and Sullivan--he was of that date:

"'A paradox, a paradox;
A most ingenious paradox!'"

"Yes," the stop-gap defiantly assented. "A paradox; and all aboriginal
verities, all giant truths, are paradoxes."

"Giant truths is good," the bachelor noted, but the stop-gap did not
mind him.

He turned to the host: "I suppose that if divorce is an evil, and we
wish to extirpate it, we must strike at its root, at marriage?"

The host laughed. "I prefer not to take the floor. I'm sure we all
want to hear what you have to say in support of your mammoth idea."

"Oh yes, indeed," the women chorused, but rather tremulously, as not
knowing what might be coming.

"Which do you mean? That all truth is paradoxical, or that marriage is
the mother of divorce?"

"Whichever you like."

"The last proposition is self-evident," the stop-gap said, supplying
himself with a small bunch of the grapes which nobody ever takes at
dinner; the hostess was going to have coffee for the women in the
drawing-room, and to leave the men to theirs with their tobacco at the
table. "And you must allow that if divorce is a good thing or a bad
thing, it equally partakes of the nature of its parent. Or else
there's nothing in heredity."

"Oh, come!" one of the husbands said.

"Very well!" the stop-gap submitted. "I yield the word to you." But as
the other went no further, he continued. "The case is so clear that it
needs no argument. Up to this time, in dealing with the evil of
divorce, if it is an evil, we have simply been suppressing the
symptoms; and your Swiss method--"

"Oh, it isn't _mine_," the man said who had stated it.

"--Is only a part of the general practice. It is another attempt to
make divorce difficult, when it is marriage that ought to be made
difficult."

"Some," the daring bachelor said, "think it ought to be made
impossible." The girl across the table began to laugh hysterically,
but caught herself up and tried to look as if she had not laughed at
all.

"I don't go as far as th