going premature interment in a small
pension in Rome. How long her patience would have lasted I cannot say.
If circumstances had been different, what would have happened? is the
most futile of speculations. What did happen was the drifting together
of us two bits of flotsam and our keeping together for the simple reason
that there were no forces urging us apart. She was past all care for
social sanctions, her sacred cap of good repute having been flung over
the windmills long before; and I, friendless unit in a world of shadows,
why should I have rejected the one warm hand that was held out to me?
As I said to her this afternoon, Why should the _bon Dieu_ disapprove? I
pay him the compliment of presuming that he is a broad-minded deity.

When my fortune came, she remarked, "I am glad I am not free. If I were,
you would want to marry me, and that would be fatal."

The divine, sound sense of the dear woman! Honour would compel the
offer. Its acceptance would bring disaster.

Marriage has two aspects. The one, a social contract, a _quid_ of
protection, maintenance, position and what not, for a _quo_ of the
various services that may be conveniently epitomized in the phrase _de
mensa et thoro_. The other, the only possible existence for two beings
whose passionate, mutual attraction demands the perfect fusion of their
two existences into a common life. Now to this passionate attraction
I have never become, and, having no temperament (thank Heaven!), shall
never become, a party. Before the turbulence therein involved I stand
affrighted as I do before London or the deep sea. I once read an epitaph
in a German churchyard: "I will awake, O Christ, when thou callest me;
but let me sleep awhile, for I am very weary." Has the human soul ever
so poignantly expressed its craving for quietude? I fancy I should have
been a heart's friend of that dead man, who, like myself, loved the cool
and quiet shadow, and was not allowed to enjoy it in this world. I may
not get the calm I desire, but at any rate my existence shall not
be turned upside down by mad passion for a woman. As for the
social-contract aspect of marriage, I want no better housekeeper than
Antoinette; and my dining-table having no guests does not need a lady to
grace its foot; I have no _a priori_ craving to add to the population.
"If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason
alone," says Schopenhauer, "would the human race continue to exist?
Would not