"I thought," he began at last, "I did think that you at least would understand and feel for me."
Beth stopped eating and considered a moment.
"Are you in any real trouble?" she asked at last.
He rose and began to pace up and down. "I will tell you," he said, "and leave you to judge for yourself."
Beth looked somewhat ruefully at the tray, and wished that the conversation had been more suited to the satisfaction of an honest appetite.
"I have made it plain to you what my marriage is without blaming anybody," he proceeded. "It is the rock upon which all my hopes were wrecked. I found my ideal. I won her like a man. I haven't a word to say against her. She is a woman who might have made any ordinary man happy; but she has been no help to me. It is not her fault. She has done her best. And it is not my fault."
"Then whose fault is it?" said Beth; "it must be somebody's. I think of marriage as I think of life; it is pretty much what people choose to make it. It does not fail when husband and wife have good principles, and live up to them; and good manners in private as well as in public—not to mention high ideals. When we are not happy in the intimate relations of life, it is generally for some trivial reason—as often as not because we don't take the trouble to make ourselves agreeable, as because we fail in other duties. I consider it a duty to be agreeable. In married life happiness depends on loyalty, to begin with, the loyalty that will not even let its thoughts stray. All that we want in everyday intercourse is truth and affection, kindness, consideration, and unvarying politeness. If people practised these as a duty from the first, sympathy would eventually come of the effort. Marriage is the state that develops the noblest qualities, and that is why happily married people are the best worth knowing, the most delightful to live amongst. You have no fault to find with your wife, therefore the fault must be in yourself if you are not happy. Do your duty like a man, and cure yourself of it."
"It surprises me to hear you talk in that way," he exclaimed, "you who have suffered so much yourself!"
"I make no pretence of having suffered," she answered. "I have no patience with people who do. We have our destiny in our own hands to make or mar, most of us. If we fail in one thing we shall succeed in another. Life is a fertile garden, full of plants that bud and blossom and bear fruit not once but every season while it lasts. If the crop of happiness fails one year, we should set to work bravely, and cultivate it all the more diligently for the next."
"All this is beside the mark," he responded peevishly. "You are offering me the generalisations that only apply to ordinary people. Allowance must be made for exceptional natures. Look at me! I tell you if I had met the right woman, I should have been at the top of the tree by this time. I have the greatest respect for woman. I believe that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man; and if the able man does not find the right woman for this purpose, he must remain sterile, and the world will be the loser. I never knew such a woman till I met you; but in you I have discovered one rich in all womanly attributes, mental, moral, and physical; and, beyond these, dowered also with genius, the divine gift—the very woman to help a man to do his best."