"It would be the lump of sugar," explained the bachelor, "that would take away the bitter taste and make you able to swallow all the trials more easily. It's the feeling that a painful operation won't last long that makes it possible to grin and bear it. Besides, it would do away with all sorts of crimes, like divorce and wife murder and ground glass in the coffee. Knowing that the marriage was only temporary and that we were only sort of house-party guests might make us more polite and agreeable and entertaining, so as to leave a good impression behind us."
"I do believe," cried the widow, sitting up straight and looking at the bachelor accusingly, "that you're arguing in favor of 'trial marriage.'"
"I'm not arguing in favor of marriage at all," protested the bachelor plaintively. "But marrying for life is like putting the whole dinner on the table at once. It takes away your appetite. Marrying on trial would be more like serving it in courses."
"And changing the course would be such a strain," declared the widow. "Why, when the contract was up how would you know how to divide things—the children and—"
"The dog and the cat."
"And all the little mementos you had collected together and the things you had shared in common and the favorite arm chair and the things you had grown used to and fond of——"
"Oh, well, in that case," remarked the bachelor, "you might have grown so used to and fond of one another that when it came to the parting of the ways, you would not want to part them. After all," he went on soberly, "if 'trial marriages' were put into effect, they would end nine times out of ten in good old fashioned matrimony. A man can get as accustomed to a woman as he does to a pipe or a chair——"
"What!"
"And a woman," pursued the bachelor, "can become as attached to a man and as fond of him as she is of an old umbrella or a pair of old shoes that have done good service. No matter how battered or worn they may become, nor how many breaks there are in them, we can never find anything to quite take their place. Matrimony, after all, is just a habit; and husbands and wives become habits—habits that however disagreeable they may be we don't want to part with. 'Trial marriages,' even if they should be tried, wouldn't alter things much. As long as two people can stand one another they will cling together anyhow, and if they can't they won't anyhow; and whether it's a run out lease or a divorce or prussic acid that separates them doesn't make much difference. Custom, not the wedding certificate, is the tie that binds most of us. The savage doesn't need any laws to hold him to the woman of his choice. Habit does it; and if habit doesn't the woman will!"
The widow sighed and leaned back in her chair.