d color of patience, and
contenting itself more and more with such friendly companionship as
their fate afforded; it became, without marriage, that affectionate
comradery which wedded love passes into with the lapse of as many years
as they had been plighted. "What," I once suggested to my wife, in a
very darkling mood--"what if they should gradually grow apart, and end
in rejoicing that they had never been allowed to join their lives?
Wouldn't that be rather Hawthornesque?"

"It wouldn't be true," said Mrs. March, "and I don't see why you should
put such a notion upon Hawthorne. If you can't be more cheerful about
it, Basil, I wish you wouldn't talk of the affair at all."

"Oh, I'm quite willing to be cheerful about it, my dear," I returned;
"and, if you like, we will fancy Mrs. Bentley coming round and ardently
wishing their marriage, and their gayly protesting that after having
given the matter a great deal of thought they had decided it would be
better not to marry, but to live on separately for their own sake, just
as they have been doing for hers so long. Wouldn't that be cheerful?"

Mrs. March said that if I wished to tease it was because I had no ideas
on the subject, and she would advise me to drop it. I did so, for the
better part of the evening, but I could not relinquish it altogether.
"Do you think," I asked, finally, "that any sort of character will stand
the test of such a prolonged engagement?"

"Why not? Very indifferent characters stand the test of marriage, and
that's indefinitely prolonged."

"Yes, but it's not indefinite itself. Marriage is something very
distinct and permanent; but such an engagement as this has no sort of
future. It is a mere motionless present, without the inspiration of a
common life, and with no hope of release from durance except through a
chance that it will be sorrow instead of joy. I should think they would
go to pieces under the strain."

"But as you see they don't, perhaps the strain isn't so great after
all."

"Ah," I confessed, "there is that wonderful adaptation of the human soul
to any circumstances. It's the one thing that makes me respect our
fallen nature. Fallen? It seems to me that we ought to call it our risen
nature; it has steadily mounted with the responsibility that Adam took
for it--or Eve."

"I don't see," said my wife, pursuing her momentary advantage, "why they
should not be getting as much pleasure or happiness out of life as most
married peop