"But you love him."
"Bitterly, madam."
"Oh, isn't that sweet—I mean, how peculiar a situation it is! No, you can't think of marrying him. It wouldn't at all do. I don't believe he could live tied down to one place. It is a first love and must live only as a romance. It will help you in your art. It will be an inspiration to all your after life, a poem to recite to your daughter in the years to come. I had one, my dear. He was wild, wholly impossible, you might say. And I was foolish enough to have married him, but my mother—she married me to the dear Doctor. And how fortunate it was for both of us, I mean for me and for Arthur! He threw himself away."
"But he might not have thrown himself away, madam, if you had married him."
"Oh, yes, he was really thrown away before I met him. My mother was right. She knew. She had married the opposite to her romance."
"But are women never to marry the men they love?"
"Oh, yes, to be sure. We all love our husbands. But we ought not to marry our first love. That would be absurd. It would leave our after life without a sweet regret. My dear, romantic love is one thing and marriage is another. Love is a distress and marriage is business. That's what the Doctor says."
"And pardon me, madam, but he lives it."
"How? What do you mean?"
"Why, you are his business partner. You take care of his house. If you are not there your servants keep the house. He may be pleased to see you, but there is never any joy in his eyes—or yours. You are dissatisfied with life. You try to make yourself believe you are not, but you are. You look about for something, all the time. If you and the Doctor should fail in business, you would grow tired of each other. You told me to be frank."