s of their deities, and consciously performed their part
in life before those marble eyes. A god watched them at the board, and
stood by their bedside in the morning when they woke; and all about
their ancient cities, where they bought and sold or where they piped and
wrestled, there would stand some symbol of the things that are outside
of man. These were lessons, delivered in the quiet dialect of art, which
told their story faithfully, but gently. It is the same lesson, if you
will--but how harrowingly taught!--when the woman you respect shall weep
from your unkindness or blush with shame at your misconduct. Poor girls
in Italy turn their painted Madonnas to the wall: you cannot set aside
your wife. To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are
married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be
good.

And goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single
virtue; for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised. A girl, it
is true, has always lived in a glass house among reproving relatives,
whose word was law; she has been bred up to sacrifice her judgments and
take the key submissively from dear papa; and it is wonderful how
swiftly she can change her tune into the husband's. Her morality has
been, too often, an affair of precept and conformity. But in the case of
a bachelor who has enjoyed some measure both of privacy and freedom, his
moral judgments have been passed in some accordance with his nature. His
sins were always sins in his own sight; he could then only sin when he
did some act against his clear conviction; the light that he walked by
was obscure, but it was single. Now, when two people of any grit and
spirit put their fortunes into one, there succeeds to this comparative
certainty a huge welter of competing jurisdictions. It no longer matters
so much how life appears to one; one must consult another: one, who may
be strong, must not offend the other, who is weak. The only weak brother
I am willing to consider is (to make a bull for once) my wife. For her,
and for her only, I must waive my righteous judgments, and go crookedly
about my life. How, then, in such an atmosphere of compromise, to keep
honour bright and abstain from base capitulations? How are you to put
aside love's pleadings? How are you, the apostle of laxity, to turn
suddenly about into the rabbi of precision, and, after these years of
ragged practice, pose for a hero to the lackey who has f