MASON TALKS ON MARRIAGE
Men are not easily intimate. They confide in each other rather seldom. Of love and marriage coarse men speak with sneers and obscene jests. Of these deep themes serious men speak in hints, with apologetic smiles, as if they were betraying a weakness, seldom going to any length of statement. They express their meaning in broken sentences—in indirect statements.
Sanborn had known Mason for some years. They were both from the country; Mason from a small interior town in Illinois, Sanborn from Indiana. Mason was an older man than Sanborn, and generally presumed upon it, also upon Sanborn's reticence.
They rode up the elevator in the Berkeley flats in silence, and in silence they removed their coats and filled their pipes, and took seats before the fire. Mason was accustomed to say he supported two rooms and an open grate fire, and he regretted it was not cold enough to have the grate lighted for that evening.
They sat some minutes in smoke. Mason sitting low in his chair, with face in repose, looked old and tired, and Sanborn was moved to say:
"Mason, I'm going to ask you a plump question: Why don't you get married? You're getting old."
"I've tried to."
"What! tried to?"
"Exactly."
"That is incredible!"