"Never."
"Are there, then, no youths and maidens?"
"Of course there are. But in our country, when a young man wants to marry a girl he settles her price with her father and takes her home. If she is loving and faithful to him, he buys her costly clothing; if not, he turns her away and buys himself another wife."
"That is not the custom here. Here a woman may only love one husband; this is commanded by our religion!"
"That is quite different. Why did you not tell me at once that love is commanded by religion? Oh, I will faithfully follow the dictates of religion! You do, too, don't you? You love your husband? Do you look deep into his eyes? I have never noticed it."
"Ah, child, life is long; and the season of love, we call the honeymoon, all too short."
"Then the honeymoon, or month, should be portioned out into minutes, and minutes into seconds, that each day of one's life should have one such second."
"You will soon find the impossibility of that."
"Now I know that Bathsheba's sin was in not loving the man whom her religion commanded her to love. Yet what had King David to do with all that?"
Yes; Korynthia, too, would fain have known how King David got mixed up in the Czar's talk. For the chattering girl had so confused her with her endless, inconsequent questions that she never thought of the prophet's words of reproof to the king.