or her to make such a declaration; she might
just as well have said anything else; it's the merest form. I shall
always hear her voice saying, "I'm unfortunate, sir." She made me feel
what a mistake it was for me to marry such a girl as Amy. I ought to
have looked about for some simple, kind-hearted work-girl; that was
the kind of wife indicated for me by circumstances. If I had earned a
hundred a year she would have thought we were well-to-do. I should have
been an authority to her on everything under the sun--and above it. No
ambition would have unsettled her. We should have lived in a couple of
poor rooms somewhere, and--we should have loved each other.'

'What a shameless idealist you are!' said Biffen, shaking his head. 'Let
me sketch the true issue of such a marriage. To begin with, the girl
would have married you in firm persuasion that you were a "gentleman"
in temporary difficulties, and that before long you would have plenty
of money to dispose of. Disappointed in this hope, she would have grown
sharp-tempered, querulous, selfish. All your endeavours to make her
understand you would only have resulted in widening the impassable
gulf. She would have misconstrued your every sentence, found food for
suspicion in every harmless joke, tormented you with the vulgarest forms
of jealousy. The effect upon your nature would have been degrading. In
the end, you must have abandoned every effort to raise her to your own
level, and either have sunk to hers or made a rupture. Who doesn't know
the story of such attempts? I myself ten years ago, was on the point of
committing such a folly, but, Heaven be praised! an accident saved me.'

'You never told me that story.'

'And don't care to now. I prefer to forget it.'

'Well, you can judge for yourself but not for me. Of course I might have
chosen the wrong girl, but I am supposing that I had been fortunate. In
any case there would have been a much better chance than in the marriage
that I made.'

'Your marriage was sensible enough, and a few years hence you will be a
happy man again.'

'You seriously think Amy will come back to me?'

'Of course I do.'

'Upon my word, I don't know that I desire it.'

'Because you are in a strangely unhealthy state.'

'I rather think I regard the matter more sanely than ever yet. I
am quite free from sexual bias. I can see that Amy was not my fit
intellectual companion, and all emotion at the thought of her has gone
from me. The word