'Well, for goodness' sake don't let us go on quoting ourselves as if we were classics in Russia backs. I still hold to that. I begin to see that Ted is my fate. I shall have to succumb. On the whole, it will be less tiresome. And then I want to go to Rome and places.'
'You might have gone with Claude and Helen.'
'Well, it was heroic of them to offer to take me; but I think it would have been still more heroic of me to have gone. Oh, every reason—Can there be anything in life more unendurable than the confident air of prosperity which envelops your newly-married couple? The melting stolen glances, the becoming humility, the timid anxiety to please that in pre-nuptial days marked their demeanour, disappear as if some witch had exorcised them with black magic.'
'Oh, let it be white magic, Stella, if only for my sake!'
'Till at last we have that placid semi-unconsciousness of each other's presence which decks your full-blown married pair as a cankerworm adorns the rose.'
'Oh, Stella, Stella! I believe you really were born with a mistrust of marriage,' laughed the elder sister.
'Yes; ever since I have been able to think or observe I have been convinced that marriage is the most foolish, faulty old institution going.'
Alice at this laughed louder than before; and then, still smiling, with the joyous, confident smile of a woman triumphantly in love, she said:
'I wish, dear, you would throw out a few hints for the improvement of this heaven-forsaken arrangement.'
'Well, you see, really to improve it would be to destroy it. To begin with, people see too much of each other, which seems to be destructive alike to passion and good manners. Oh yes; you are ready to mourir à rire at all this. Nevertheless, fate and the comedians are lying in wait for you.'