contends only for
greater justice to it in the last. In the light that he has come into,
he holds that where such unions are unhappy, though they may have been
formed with a fair appearance of affection, it is the senior partner who
is to blame if blame may ever be attached to involuntary change. It is
the senior partner who has wearied first of the companionship and wished
for release with the impatience natural to age. This is intolerant of
the annoyances which seem inherent in every union of the kind, and
impatient of those differences of temperament which tell far more than
any disparities of age, and which exist even where there are no such
disparities. The intolerance, the impatience, is not more characteristic
of the husband where he is the elder than of the wife in the much fewer
instances of her seniority. In the unions where two old people join
their faltering destinies, the risks of unhappiness are, logically,
doubled; and our friend holds it a grotesque folly to expect anything
else of marriages in which two lovers, disappointed of each other in
their youth, attempt to repair the loss in their age. Where any such
survive into later life, with the passion of earlier life still rife in
their hearts, he argues that they had much better remain as they are,
for in such a belated union as they aspire to the chances are
overwhelmingly against them.

Very probably, like other discoverers, he is too much impressed with the
value of his divination. It is something that, at any rate, can appeal
for recognition only to the aged or the aging. With these we could
imagine it bringing a certain consolation, a relief from vain regret, an
acquittal from self-accusation. If one has suddenly changed for no
apparent reason, one must be glad to find a reason in the constitution
of things, and to attribute one's fickleness to one's time of life.
Youth's errors have possibly been too much condoned upon grounds where
age could more justly base its defence. It may be more reckless than
age, but it is not nearly so rash. It keeps thinking its long, long
thoughts and questioning the conclusions to which age eagerly hobbles or
hurls itself from its crutches. Youth is deliberate, for it has plenty
of time, while, as our friend notes, age has little but eternity before
it. Not youth, but age, leaps from life's trolley while it is still in
motion, or, after mismeasuring the time and space, limps impatiently
before it and is rolled under it