st scornfully when I told
him this, and said I had been barking up the wrong tree. I retaliated by
saying that if they had been ordinary lovers, I never could have made
such a mistake, and they took it as a great compliment. When I consider
the general run of engaged people, I am inclined to agree with them.
Everybody seems to think they are making an experiment of marriage,
because they are so much alike. But, then, doesn't every one who marries
at all, Jew or Gentile, black or white, bond or free, make an experiment?
I myself have no fear as to how the Percival experiment will turn out.
Rachel says that they are so similar in all their tastes and ideals that
if she were a man she would be Percival, and if he were a woman he would
be Rachel. "Then you still would have a chance to marry each other," I
said frivolously. But she assented with a depth of feeling which ignored
my feeble attempt to be cheerful. "Yet," she continued, "there is a
subtle, alluring difference in our thoughts; just enough to add piquancy,
not irritation, to a discussion. I do not love white, and he does not love
black, as so many husbands and wives do. We both love gray; different
tones of gray, but still gray. It is very restful." The Percivals are not
only restful to themselves, but to others. They used to be in the highly
irritable, nervous state of those whose sensitive organisms are a little
too fine for this world. I never objected to it myself, but I have said
before that Rachel was of no use to ordinary society, and Percival was
little better. When people failed to understand her, she retired into
herself with a dignity which was mistaken for ill-temper. She is too
refined and high-minded to defend herself against the "slings and arrows
of outrageous" people, although if she would, she could exterminate them
with her wit. And some could so easily be spared. It seems, too, that she
is great enough to be a target, so she is under fire continually. This,
while it causes her exquisite suffering, is from no fault of her own--save
the unforgivable one of being original. "A frog spat at a glow-worm. 'Why
do you spit at me?' said the glow-worm. 'Why do you shine so?' said the
frog." And as to Percival--the man I used to know was Percival in embryo.
He is maturing now, and is radiant in Rachel's sympathetic comprehension
of him. He refers to the time before he knew her as his "protoplasmic
state," as indeed it was. But there are a good many of us who