“That doesn’t mean anything,” said she, looking shrewdly at him. And the gray eyes, with all the softness of sleep driven from them, were now keen rather than kind. “You are young, for all your serious look; and you are romantic, I suppose. Artists always are. You will fall in love.”
“Not impossible,” conceded he.
“And marry,” concluded she, with the air of having proved her case.
“If I loved a woman I wouldn’t marry her. If I didn’t love her I couldn’t.”
“That sounds like a puzzle—a—a conundrum. I give it up. What’s the answer?”
“I’ve lived in France several years,” said he, “and I’ve learned the sound sense back of their marriage system. Love and marriage have nothing to do with each other.”
The gray eyes opened wide.
“Nothing to do with each other,” pursued he tranquilly. “Love is all excitement; marriage ought to be all calm. Marriage means a home—a family—a place to bring up children in peace and tranquillity, a safe harbor. Love is a Bohemian; marriage is a bourgeois. Love is insanity; marriage is sanity. Love is disease; marriage is solid, stolid health.”
“I think those ideas are just horrid!” cried she.
He laughed at her with his eyes. In a tone of raillery he said: “And you—who love money, you say—do you intend to marry for love?—just love?—only love?”