na, _minus_ the apples, and must get rid of your
heart at once, in order to smile constantly as we do."

"Olga, don't libel yourself and society so unmercifully. Don't marry
Mr. Congreve. Think how horrible it must be to spend all your life
with a man whom you do not love!"

"I assure you, that will form no part either of his programme, or of
mine. I shall have my 'societies' (charitable, of course), my daily
drives, my 'Luncheons,' and box the opera with occasional supper at
Delmonico's; and Mr. Congreve will have his Yacht affairs, and Wall
Street 'corners' to look after, and will of course spend the majority
of his evenings at that fascinating 'Century,' which really is the
only thing that your quartz-souled guardian cherishes any affection
for."

"But Mr. Palma is not married, and when you are Mr. Congreve's wife,
of course instead of going to his club, your husband will expect to
remain at home with you."

"That might be possible in the old-fashioned parsonage where you
imbibed so many queer outlandish doctrines; but I do assure you, we
have quite outgrown such an intolerable orthodox system of penance.
The less married people see of each other these days, the fewer
scalps dangle around the hearthstone. The customs of the matrimonial
world have changed since that distant time when sacrificing to Juno
as the Goddess of Wedlock, the gall was so carefully extracted from
the victim and thrown behind the altar; implying that in married life
all anger and bitterness should be exterminated. If Tacitus could
revisit this much-civilized world of the nineteenth century, I wonder
if he could find a nation who would tempt him to repeat what he once
wrote concerning the sanctity of marriage among the Germans? 'There
vice is not laughed at, and corruption is not called the fashion.'
Mr. Silas Congreve is much too enlightened to prefer his slippers at
home to his place at the club. As for sitting up as a rival in the
'Century,' female vanity never soared to so sublime a height of
folly! and if Erle Palma were married forty times, his darling club
would still hold the first place in his flinty affections. It must
be a most marvellously attractive place, that bewitching 'Century,'
to magnetize so completely the iron of his nature. I have my
suspicion that one reason why the husbands cling so fondly to its
beloved precincts is because it corresponds in some respects to the
wonderful 'Peacestead' of the AEsir, whose strongest la