'I take it,' said my lady interlocutor, 'that you do not advocate marriage for the rising poet, painter, dramatist, or novelist?'

'I do not advocate marriage for any man that is too susceptible or who has the artistic temperament too strongly developed. The man who is strong enough to achieve great things is strong enough to achieve them alone—that is, unless he is fortunate enough to meet the exceptional woman. Lord Byron said that nothing can inflict greater torture upon a woman than the mere fact of loving a poet. This is not due to the heartless or deliberate cruelty of the poet. He himself is to be pitied for being a martyr, the slave of art. It is the natural depth of a poet's emotions to fall in love with every lovely woman. The higher we rise in the intellectual scale, says a modern writer, the more varied, complex, and deep are the emotional groups which delight and torment the soul. Mental work does not extinguish passions; it feeds the flames, on the contrary, and unfits the brain-owner for matrimony. Only people who have uneventful, almost humdrum, lives are good subjects for matrimony and perfectly happy in marriage.'

'Then you do not admit the existence of the man who needs the quiet sympathy of a good domestic wife before his art becomes fully articulate?'

'No, because the artist constantly wants stimulants, and a domestic life is not stimulating. Now, do not misunderstand me. Marriage can make a man very happy, including the man with the strong artistic temperament, but I don't think that it helps him. I have come across hundreds of cases where artistic and literary efforts have been checked, and sometimes killed outright, by the petty cares and worries of domestic life. The brain-worker is very easily irked and tormented by the most trivial things. He is irritable and most sensitive. I have known literary men put right off their work for days simply because devoted wives came into their studies, and, after giving them an encouraging kiss, carried off their pens to make out their washing list. I have known painters whose faculties were positively benumbed by the presence of their wives. I have known dramatists who could never set to work in earnest before they had sent their families into the country or had themselves left home far behind them; and, mind you, these men were all fond of their wives.'

'You are not encouraging.'

'Will you have a cup of tea?'

'Thank you, with pleasure; but does marriage——'

'Do you take sugar?'

'If you please; but are there not cases——'

'And cream?'