et?"

"No; Bottom and Titania--and Romeo and Juliet were not prevented in
time. They had their bliss once and to the full, and died before they
caused each other anything but ecstasy. No weariness of routine, no
tears of disenchantment; complete love, completely realized--and finis!
It's the happiest ending of all the plays."

He looked at me hard. "Sometimes I believe you're ironic!"

I smiled at him. "A sign of the highest civilization, then. But
please to think of Juliet after ten years of Romeo and his pin-headed
intelligence and his preordained infidelities. Do you imagine that her
predecessor, Rosamond, would have had no successors? Juliet would have
been compelled to divorce Romeo, if only for the children's sake.

"The children!" cried John Mayrant. "Why, it's for their sake deserted
women abstain from divorce!"

"Juliet would see deeper than such mothers. She could not have her
little sons and daughters grow up and comprehend their father's
absences, and see their mother's submission to his returns for such
discovery would scorch the marrow of any hearts they had."

At this, as we came out of the Library, he made an astonishing
rejoinder, and one which I cannot in the least account for: "South
Carolina does not allow divorce."

"Then I should think," I said to him, "that all you people here would
be doubly careful as to what manner of husbands and wives you chose for
yourselves."

Such a remark was sailing, you may say, almost within three points of
the wind; and his own accidental allusion to Romeo had brought it about
with an aptness and a celerity which were better for my purpose than
anything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania;
none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fond
couple also as basis for a moral, in spite of the sharp turn which those
last words of mine now caused him at once to give to our conversation.
His quick reversion to the beginning of the talk seemed like a dodging
of remarks that hit too near home for him to relish hearing pursued.

"Well, sir," he resumed with the same initial briskness, "I was ashamed
if you were not."

"I still don't make out what impropriety we have jointly committed."

"What do you think of the views you expressed about our country?"

"Oh! When we sat on the gravestones."

"What do you think about it to-day?"

I turned to him as we slowly walked toward Worship Street. "Did you say
anything then th