“Not, at least, with the prince,” supplemented the baron.
“What do you mean?”
“I may be wrong,” said the baron, “because I do not understand your women; but I have observed Miss Davis as carefully as I could—naturally, since I had need to do so!—and I have become more and more convinced that somewhere in her life there has been an unhappy love affair, from which she has never quite recovered. That happens, does it not, even to American girls?”
“Yes, of course,” said Selden.
“I admit it does not seem probable, but it is the only explanation I can find of a thing which has appeared to me very strange. For the only question she has asked herself, apparently, about this marriage is not whether she would be happy, but whether she would be useful.”
“Yes,” said Selden again; “she asked me just that.”
“Not for a moment, so far as I could see, has she thought of love. That, I confess, seemed to me unnatural; though perhaps American girls do not think of love,” and the baron shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “Or perhaps they are ashamed of it. I do not know. As for happiness—are your American marriages always happy?”
“No, not always,” Selden admitted with a smile.
“I have never seen one that appeared so,” said the baron; “not as a French marriage is very often happy. To me, American husbands and wives seem merely bored with each other. Why should two people stay together when they would be happier apart?”
“You see only the worst ones over here; and a lot of people are held together by habit, by fear of ridicule or loss of position. We are cowards in that respect.”