girls, and more or less
together--too much together sometimes.

These people had, it now became clear to us, the highest, keenest, most
delicate sense of personal privacy, but not the faintest idea of that
SOLITUDE A DEUX we are so fond of. They had, every one of them, the "two
rooms and a bath" theory realized. From earliest childhood each had
a separate bedroom with toilet conveniences, and one of the marks of
coming of age was the addition of an outer room in which to receive
friends.

Long since we had been given our own two rooms apiece, and as being of a
different sex and race, these were in a separate house. It seemed to be
recognized that we should breathe easier if able to free our minds in
real seclusion.

For food we either went to any convenient eating-house, ordered a meal
brought in, or took it with us to the woods, always and equally good.
All this we had become used to and enjoyed--in our courting days.

After marriage there arose in us a somewhat unexpected urge of feeling
that called for a separate house; but this feeling found no response in
the hearts of those fair ladies.

"We ARE alone, dear," Ellador explained to me with gentle patience.
"We are alone in these great forests; we may go and eat in any little
summer-house--just we two, or have a separate table anywhere--or even
have a separate meal in our own rooms. How could we be aloner?"

This was all very true. We had our pleasant mutual solitude about our
work, and our pleasant evening talks in their apartments or ours; we
had, as it were, all the pleasures of courtship carried right on; but we
had no sense of--perhaps it may be called possession.

"Might as well not be married at all," growled Terry. "They only got up
that ceremony to please us--please Jeff, mostly. They've no real idea of
being married."

I tried my best to get Ellador's point of view, and naturally I tried to
give her mine. Of course, what we, as men, wanted to make them see was
that there were other, and as we proudly said "higher," uses in this
relation than what Terry called "mere parentage." In the highest terms I
knew I tried to explain this to Ellador.

"Anything higher than for mutual love to hope to give life, as we did?"
she said. "How is it higher?"

"It develops love," I explained. "All the power of beautiful permanent
mated love comes through this higher development."

"Are you sure?" she asked gently. "How do you know that it was so
developed? There