his parents being dead) an allowance of L350, and
that when he came of age he would have an income of L400. 'All out of
dividends,' he would groan. I would hint that Mr. Hines and similar
zealots might disembarrass him of this load, if he asked them nicely.
'No,' he would say quite seriously, 'I can't do that,' and would read
out passages from 'Fabian Essays' to show that in the present anarchical
conditions only mischief could result from sporadic dispersal of rent.
'Ten, twelve years hence--' he would muse more hopefully. 'But by that
time,' I would say, 'you'll probably be married, and your wife mightn't
quite--', whereat he would hotly repeat what he had said many times:
that he would never marry. Marriage was an anti-social anachronism. I
think its survival wasin some part due to the machinations of Capital.
Anyway, it was doomed. Temporary civil contracts between men and women
would be the rule 'ten, twelve years hence'; pending which time the lot
of any man who had civic sense must be celibacy, tempered perhaps with
free love.

Long before that time was up, nevertheless, William married. One
afternoon in the spring of '95 I happened to meet him at a corner of
Cockspur Street. I wondered at the immense cordiality of his greeting;
for our friendship, such as it was, had waned in our two final years at
Oxford. 'You look very flourishing, and,' I said, 'you're wearing a
new suit!' 'I'm married,' he replied, obviously without a twinge of
conscience. He told me he had been married just a month. He declared
that to be married was the most splendid thing in all the world; but he
weakened the force of this generalisation by adding that there never was
any one like his wife. 'You must see her,' he said; and his impatience
to show her proudly off to some one was so evident, and so touching,
that I could but accept his invitation to go and stay with them for two
or three days--'why not next week?' They had taken and furnished 'a sort
of cottage' in ----shire, and this was their home. He had 'run up for
the day, on business--journalism' and was now on his way to Charing
Cross. 'I know you'll like my wife,' he said at parting. She's--well,
she's glorious.'

As this was the epithet he had erst applied to 'Beowulf' and to 'Sigurd
the Volsung' it raised no high hopes. And indeed, as I was soon to find,
he had again misused it. There was nothing glorious about his bride.
Some people might even have not thought her pretty. I mysel