marriages where both parties aim at perfection and are
willing to accept mutual criticism. But there is something a little
callous in this form of self-improvement society. People who are too
much together are always making notes, adding up in their hearts bitter
little adverse balances with which they will one day confront the fallen
lover. Some slight offense will bring up the bill of arrears. A quarrel
about a forgotten ticket will give life to the cruel thing he said seven
years before about her mother's bonnets, or her sudden dismissal of the
cook, or the dreadful day when he sat on the eggs in the train. (Clumsy
brute!) All these things pile up and pile up until they form a terrible,
towering cairn made up of tiny stones, but of great total weight, just
as an avalanche rests securely upon a crest until a whisper releases it.
Nearly all marriages are in a state of permanent mobilization. There is
only one thing to do, to remember all the time that one could not hope
to meet one quite great enough to be one's mate, and that this is the
best the world can do. The thought that nobody can quite understand one
or quite appreciate one arouses a delicious sorrow and an enormous
pride.

4

Too much together is bad, and too much apart may be worse. As I
suggested before, there is no pleasing this institution.

It is easier to live too separate than too close, for one comes together
freshly, and marriage feels less irremediable when it hardly exists.
There really are couples who care for each other very well, who meet in
a country house and say: "What! you here! How jolly!" That is an extreme
case. In practice, separateness means conjugal acquaintanceship.
Different pleasures, different friends, perhaps different worlds;
indeed, one is mutually fresh, but traveling different roads, one may
find that there is nothing in common. Of two evils, it is better perhaps
to be too intimate than too distant, because there are many irritating
things that with reminiscence become delightful. The dreadful day when
he sat on the eggs in the train is not entirely dreadful, for he looked
so silly when he stood up, removing the eggs, and though one was angry,
one vaguely loved him for having made a fool of himself. (There are nine
and sixty ways of gaining affection, and one of them is to be a
good-tempered butt.)

Separateness, naturally, cannot coincide with the sense of mutual
property. This is perhaps the cause of the greatest unhap