“Pelleas, we ought—we really ought, you know, to make a new will.”
The word casts a veritable shadow on the page as I write it. Pelleas, conscious of the same shadow, moved and frowned.
“But why, Etarre?” he asked; “I had an uncle who lived to be ninety.”
“So will you,” I said, “and still—”
“He began translating Theocritus at ninety,” Pelleas continued convincingly.
“I’ll venture he had made his will by then, though,” said I.
“Is that any reason why I should make mine?” Pelleas demanded. “I never did the things my family did.”
“Like living until ninety?” I murmured.
O, I could not love Pelleas if he was never unreasonable. It seems to me that the privilege of unreason is one of the gifts of marriage; and when I hear The Married chiding each other for the exercise of this gift I long to cry: Is it not tiresome enough in all conscience to have to keep up a brave show of reason for one’s friends, without wearing a uniform of logic in private? Laugh at each other’s unreason for your pastime, and Heaven bless you.
Pelleas can do more than this: He can laugh at his own unreason. And when he had done so:—