A smile that warmed her features like a burst of sunlight illumined Miss King's lovely face.
"I am sure we should agree famously on this subject, at least, Mr. Durand," she said. "It is seldom I meet a gentleman whose ideas accord so perfectly with my own."
"You are two foolish children," interposed Mrs. Butler, "and your ideas are quite too extreme. Marriage is not the wretched bondage you describe it. Some one has said very truthfully, 'If nothing is perfect in this world, marriage is perhaps the best thing amid much evil. If a fickle husband goes, he returns: but the lover—once gone he never returns.' I am sure, Mr. Durand, that you would make some woman an excellent husband."
Percy shook his head. "That is because you do not know me," he replied. "Whatever my nature was originally, my experiences in the world have left me incapable of unselfish devotion, or absorbing love."
"Oh, oh!" cried Mrs. Butler, "I will not hear you so malign yourself. Any man who was so kind as you were to your cousin, must have a heart."
"Perhaps I had, once upon a time. But there is such a thing as frittering away one's best emotions. Certainly, now, I cannot imagine a woman so good, so beautiful, or so endowed with graces, that I should wish to make her my wife. If I did, I know her goodness would be a reproach to me, her beauty would pall upon me, and her constancy would irritate me. And yet, the absence of any of these qualities would displease me. So you see I am better off single. I think my cousin considers me a good sort of relative! I am sure I am faithful in my friendships: but the requisites of a desirable husband, I do not possess. Besides, begging the pardon of both my lady listeners, I must say, while I have so little faith in myself, I have even less in womankind. I do not care to risk my future in the hands of an unreliable woman."
"A man of your experience and judgment would not be apt to make that error," Mrs. Butler replied. "And women are proverbially faithful by nature, you know—even clinging to the men who maltreat them."
"Judgment and experience are not of the slightest use in selecting a wife or husband," responded Percy. "First, because it is only in the daily intimacies of constant companionship that we can learn another's peculiarities; and secondly—in the case of the woman, at least—the maiden and wife are two distinct beings. I have seen the most amiable and charming girl develope into a veritable Xantippe of a wife. Then, as for the proverbial faithfulness of woman—it is the poet's idea of the sex, I know, but it is not verified in reality. Women are quite as faulty as men, and even more easily assailed by temptation. But they are more discreet, and make a greater show of good qualities than we do. Men boast of their infidelities, women conceal them."
"Rouen!" shouted the guard, flinging open the door of the compartment.