ent
upon the grudging kindness of an ungrateful child--what a supreme
humiliation! All these things are occurring constantly everywhere.
Suppose his wife, having loved him, ceased to love him, or suppose he
ceased to love his wife! _Ces choses ne se commandent pas_--these
things do not command themselves. Personally, I should estimate that
in not one per cent. even of romantic marriages are the husband and
wife capable of _passion_ for each other after three years. So brief
is the violence of love! In perhaps thirty-three per cent. passion
settles down into a tranquil affection--which is ideal. In fifty per
cent. it sinks into sheer indifference, and one becomes used to one's
wife or one's husband as to one's other habits. And in the remaining
sixteen per cent. it develops into dislike or detestation. Do you
think my percentages are wrong, you who have been married a long time
and know what the world is? Well, you may modify them a little--you
won't want to modify them much.

The risk of finding one's self ultimately among the sixteen per cent.
can be avoided by the simple expedient of not marrying. And by the
same expedient the other risks can be avoided, together with yet
others that I have not mentioned. It is entirely obvious, then (in
fact, I beg pardon for mentioning it), that the attitude towards
marriage of the heart-free bachelor must be at best a highly cautious
attitude. He knows he is already in the frying-pan (none knows
better), but, considering the propinquity of the fire, he doubts
whether he had not better stay where he is. His life will be calmer,
more like that of a hibernating snake; his sensibilities will be
dulled; but the chances of poignant suffering will be very materially
reduced.

So that the bachelor in a position to marry but not in love will
assuredly decide in theory against marriage--that is to say, if he is
timid, if he prefers frying-pans, if he is lacking in initiative, if
he has the soul of a rat, if he wants to live as little as possible,
if he hates his kind, if his egoism is of the miserable sort that
dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been more happily
gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging
into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him
to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted
by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of
ownership felt by the normal husband and