ou
into sympathy with me in this matter. In the first place, you have never
been married, I have. In the next, you are much younger than I, in more
respects than that of years. Very likely half your ideas on the subject
are derived from fictions in which happy results are tacked on to
conditions very ill-calculated to produce them--which in real life
hardly ever do produce them. If our friendship were a chapter in a
novel, what would be the upshot of it? Why, I should marry you, or you
break your heart at my treachery."

Gertrude moved her eyes as if she had some intention of taking to
flight.

"But our relations being those of real life--far sweeter, after all--I
never dreamed of marrying you, having gained and enjoyed your friendship
without that eye to business which our nineteenth century keeps open
even whilst it sleeps. You, being equally disinterested in your regard
for me, do not think of breaking your heart, but you are, I suppose, a
little hurt at my apparently meditating and resolving on such a serious
step as marriage with Agatha without confiding my intention to you. And
you punish me by telling me that you have nothing to do with it--that it
is nothing to you. But I never meditated the step, and so had nothing to
conceal from you. It was conceived and executed in less than a minute.
Although my first marriage was a silly love match and a failure, I have
always admitted to myself that I should marry again. A bachelor is a man
who shirks responsibilities and duties; I seek them, and consider it
my duty, with my monstrous superfluity of means, not to let the
individualists outbreed me. Still, I was in no hurry, having other
things to occupy me, and being fond of my bachelor freedom, and doubtful
sometimes whether I had any right to bring more idlers into the world
for the workers to feed. Then came the usual difficulty about the lady.
I did not want a helpmeet; I can help myself. Nor did I expect to be
loved devotedly, for the race has not yet evolved a man lovable on
thorough acquaintance; even my self-love is neither thorough nor
constant. I wanted a genial partner for domestic business, and Agatha
struck me quite suddenly as being the nearest approach to what I desired
that I was likely to find in the marriage market, where it is extremely
hard to suit oneself, and where the likeliest bargains are apt to be
snapped up by others if one hesitates too long in the hope of finding
something better. I admire A