did not reply at once.

"Are you sure you are not making a virtue of necessity?" she asked a
little bitterly.

"I think as much as anything," he said slowly, "I was excusing myself
for not having known all along that the real life, and the most useful
one, is the one we could have made together. Principalities and powers
and empires and republics have fallen. When God wants to regenerate
the world, He begins with the family. Now _I_," with unspeakable
scorn,--"_I_ intended to begin with a different primary law. I could
have made a good home, but I was intent on making an indifferent,
honest congressman, or senator, or perhaps president. In a way your
home always meant a good deal of what I am trying to say. You always
had some one on hand you were trying to make capable of great things
by believing in them. You made us welcome, and were ready to listen to
our troubles, our literary curiosities, our musical gems and our
aspirations. Suppose I had had sense enough to refuse the husks and
choose--"

"Don't say it," she answered. "Don't say it, even if you mean it, for
I should have sent you away, and have felt like reviling you for
putting your hand to the plow and turning back. Your ambitions were
the most attractive thing about you then. I hadn't pinned my faith on
a primary law; I think it was government ownership that I regarded as
the great regenerator. I am glad if my home seemed homelike to any
one; it never reached my ideal; and when a woman's home isn't the hub
of her universe,--well, she takes to china painting, or gossip, or
philanthropy; a man takes to poker or politics. I took to politics,
second-hand. Personally and concretely I abhorred the whole miserable
farce, but abstractly, and as a means to an end which I greatly
desired, I found it interesting. I admired you infinitely more than I
liked you in those days, but I wouldn't have married you under any
circumstances."

"Why?"

"First, because I didn't want to marry any one; I didn't want to care
that much. And, secondly, because I wanted you to devote yourself to
your country, and had you possessed a family your devotion would have
been divided. I don't see," she went on reflectively, "how you, who
know so well how empty it all was, and how hopeless the endeavor to
lift it an inch,--I don't see how you can think anything would justify
us in making it go on."

"But, on the other hand," he said, "are we justified in snuffing it
all out? There was so