ing bliss to descend upon the
bridal pair.

Then somebody discovered that marriage was not the end; it was only the
beginning, and somebody acted on this wonderful discovery and began to
tell the varying fortunes of those stupid, cut and dried, buried and
laid away persons, the bride and groom, whom we had hitherto parted
with at the church door. It was as if the carriage door slammed upon
their happiness, and ended their career. Their ultimate fate was for
ever settled. They died to the world with the hurling of the rice, and
vanished from the sight of readers with the casting of the old shoe.

Then we learned that life began with marriage. Has our taste changed,
or have we only awakened to the truth?

Ask any woman who is happily married, and see if she says she can ever
remember anything before she became a wife. I remember that certain
things did happen before I met Aubrey, but I recall them as I sometimes
try to tell him a dream which is indistinct and somewhat unreal.

But that is because I have found, out of all the world, my mate.

How does any one dare to marry? As I look around me, at the mistakes
other women have made, I wonder that I had the courage to marry even
the Angel. For supposing he hadn't been the right man! I'd have been
dead by this time, so there's that comfort anyway.

But he was!

To those who know the Angel, I need say no more. And even to those who
never have seen him, and never will know him except in this chronicle,
the wonder of it can never cease, for so few women, out of all the men
in the universe, find their mates, as I have found mine.

Men propose and women marry, but the misfits are palpable all through
life to others, and frequently to themselves. They look back and
wonder, when it is too late, how they ever imagined that they could
live together without wanting to murder each other daily. Yet they
console themselves with the thought that theirs is only an ordinary
marriage, containing no more jarring notes than most. Yet if they ever
stopped to think what might have been--if they dared look into the
inner chamber where hope lies dead, they would wonder that their misery
was not so stamped upon their faces that people would turn to look at
them in the street and stare at the hopelessness of their broken lives.
Do the unhappily married ever dare pause to think of the real mate of
each, lost somewhere in the wide world, perhaps going about, ever
seeking, seeking,