on to marriage," Stuart said--it was the
very day in which the picture had been sent to his rooms--"is the old
one that you can't tell anything about it until you are committed to it
forever. It is a very silly thing to discuss even, because there is no
way of bringing it about, but there really should be some sort of a
preliminary trial. As the man says in the play, 'you wouldn't buy a
watch without testing it first.' You don't buy a hat even without
putting it on, and finding out whether it is becoming or not, or whether
your peculiar style of ugliness can stand it. And yet men go gayly off
and get married, and make the most awful promises, and alter their whole
order of life and risk the happiness of some lovely creature on trust,
as it were, knowing absolutely nothing of the new conditions and
responsibilities of the life before them. Even a river pilot has to
serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license, and yet we are allowed
to take just as great risks, and only because we _want_ to take them.
It's awful, and it's all wrong."

"Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it," commented young
Sloane, lightly, "except to get divorced. That road is always open."

Sloane was starting the next morning for the Somali Country, in
Abyssinia, to shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matrimony was in
consequence somewhat slight.

"It isn't the fear of the responsibilities that keeps Stuart, nor any
one of us back," said Weimer, contemptuously. "It's because we're
selfish. That's the whole truth of the matter. We love our work, or our
pleasure, or to knock about the world, better than we do any particular
woman. When one of us comes to love the woman best, his conscience won't
trouble him long about the responsibilities of marrying her."

"Not at all," said Stuart, "I am quite sincere; I maintain that there
should be a preliminary stage. Of course there can't be, and it's absurd
to think of it, but it would save a lot of unhappiness."

"Well," said Seldon, dryly, "when you've invented a way to prevent
marriage from being a lottery, let me know, will you?" He stood up and
smiled nervously. "Any of you coming to see us to-night?" he asked.

"That's so," exclaimed Weimer, "I forgot. It's the first night of 'A
Fool and His Money,' isn't it? Of course we're coming."

"I told them to put a box away for you in case you wanted it," Seldon
continued. "Don't expect much. It's a silly piece, and I've a silly
part, and I