ividual suitors must take their chances of being either eaten or
adored."

"Jim, you're so funny."

She swung her stool, rested her elbow on the piano, and gazed at him
interrogatively, the odd, half-smile edging her lips and eyes. And,
after a little _duetto_ of silence:

"Do you suppose I shall ever come to care for you--imprudently?" she
asked.

"I wouldn't let you."

"How could you help it? And, as far as that goes, how could I, if it
happened?"

"If you ever come to care at all," he said, "you'll care enough."

"That is the trouble with you," she retorted, "you don't care
enough."

A slight flush stained his cheek-bones: "Sometimes," he said, "I
almost wish I cared less. And that would be what you call enough."

Colour came into her face, too:

"Do you know, Jim, I really don't know how much I do care for you? It
sounds rather silly, doesn't it?"

"Do you care more than you did at first?"

"Yes."

"Much more?"

"I told you I don't know how much."

"Not enough to marry me?"

"Must we discuss that again?"

He got up, went out to the hall, pulled a book from his overcoat
pocket, and returned.

"Would you care to hear what the greatest American says on the
subject, Palla?"

"On the subject of marriage?"

"No; he takes the marriage for granted. It's what he has to say
concerning the obligations involved."

"Proceed, dear," she said, laughingly.

He read, eliminating what was not necessary to make his point:

"'A race is worthless and contemptible if its men cease to work hard
and, at need, to fight hard; and if its women cease to breed freely.
If the best classes do not reproduce themselves the nation will, of
course, go down.

"'When the ordinary decent man does not understand that to marry the
woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all
goals; when the ordinary woman does not understand that all other
forms of life are but makeshift substitutes for the life of the wife,
the mother of healthy children; then the State is rotten at heart.

"'The woman who shrinks from motherhood is as low a creature as a man
of the professional pacifist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his duty
as a soldier.

"'The only full life for man or woman is led by those men and women
who together, with hearts both gentle and valiant, face lives of love
and duty, who see their children rise up to call them blessed, and who
leave behind them their seed to inherit the earth.

"'No celibate