“They once seemed to divide society for a woman into friends, enemies, and husbands. The husband was—just a husband. When a husband has been a friend—”
“I see. You make marriage a sort of post-graduate course in friendship. I must tell Bert that I shall have something to add to his M. A.”
“Yes,” I said, “Master of Hearts.”
“I should like that better if it were not plural. It sounds too promiscuous. Bert isn’t at all promiscuous.”
“Let me see—Magister amoris: that is scarcely definite enough either. But Bert has acquired something more important than a degree—he has acquired a detached and supplemental conscience to which he may look for a candor even greater than that of his own.”
“I am to be a conscience to him, am I?” she asked.
“But a proper and effective conscience, a conscience that acquires a controlling power, has, I need not tell you, a still, small voice. In this, minor managing of yours, in the process of which you will act as Bert’s detached conscience, you must be very dexterous. It has been said that the secret of being a bore is to tell everything. It is the same way with consciences. A conscience that told everything, that didn’t know when to be inaudible, would get to be—ineffective. All of which it is quite unnecessary to say to you.”