atching the lights of the village
ashore.

"I wonder how you and I would have turned out," said Maas quietly, when
they had been standing at the rails for some minutes, "if we had been
born and bred in this little village, and had never seen any sort of
life outside the Geiranger?"

"Without attempting to moralize, I don't doubt but that we should have
been better in many ways," Browne replied. "I can assure you there are
times when I get sick to death of the inane existence we lead."

"_Leben heisst traeumen; weise sein heisst angenehm traeumen_," quoted
Maas, half to himself and half to his cigar. "Schiller was not so very
far out after all."

"Excellent as far as the sentiment is concerned," said Browne, as he
flicked the ash off his cigar and watched it drop into the water
alongside. "But, however desirous we may be of dreaming agreeably, our
world will still take good care that we wake up just at the moment when
we are most anxious to go on sleeping."

"In order that we may not be disillusioned, my friend," said Maas.
"The starving man dreams of City banquets, and wakes to the unpleasant
knowledge that it does not do to go to sleep on an empty stomach. The
debtor imagines himself the possessor of millions, and wakes to find
the man-in-possession seated by his bedside. But there is one cure;
and you should adopt it, my dear Browne."

"What is that?"

"Marriage, my friend! Get yourself a wife and you will have no time to
think of such things. Doesn't your Ben Jonson say that marriage is the
best state for a man in general?"

"Marriage!" retorted Browne scornfully. "It always comes back to that.
I tell you I have come to hate the very sound of the word. From the
way people talk you might think marriage is the pivot on which our
lives turn. They never seem to realise that it is the rock upon which
we most of us go to pieces. What is a London season but a monstrous
market, in which men and women are sold to the highest bidders,
irrespective of inclination or regard? I tell you, Maas, the way these
things are managed in what we call English society borders on the
indecent. Lord A. is rich; consequently a hundred mothers offer him
their daughters. He may be what he pleases--an honourable man, or the
greatest blackguard at large upon the earth. In nine cases out of ten
it makes little or no difference, provided, of course, he has a fine
establishment and the settlements are satisfactory. At the
c