he would have been the one to give in if they had gone to
France?"

"Perhaps not. And then the marriage would have been unhappy. Did
you never take notice that a woman's happiness, and consequently the
happiness of marriage, depends upon a woman's having her own way in all
social matters? Before our war all the men who married down South took
the Southern view, and all the Southern women who married up North held
their own, and sensibly controlled the sympathies of their husbands."

"And how was it with the Northern women who married South, as you say?"

"Well, it must be confessed that a good many of them adapted themselves,
in appearance at least. Women can do that, and never let anyone see they
are not happy and not doing it from choice."

"And don't you think American women adapt themselves happily to English
life?"

"Doubtless some; I doubt if many do; but women do not confess mistakes
of that kind. Woman's happiness depends so much upon the continuation of
the surroundings and sympathies in which she is bred. There are always
exceptions. Do you know, Mr. Lyon, it seems to me that some people do
not belong in the country where they were born. We have men who ought to
have been born in England, and who only find themselves really they go
there. There are who are ambitious, and court a career different from
any that a republic can give them. They are not satisfied here. Whether
they are happy there I do not know; so few trees, when at all grown,
will bear transplanting."

"Then you think international marriages are a mistake?"

"Oh, I don't theorize on subjects I am ignorant of."

"You give me very cold comfort."

"I didn't know," said Margaret, with a laugh that was too genuine to be
consoling, "that you were traveling for comfort; I thought it was for
information."

"And I am getting a great deal," said Mr. Lyon, rather ruefully. "I'm
trying to find out where. I ought to have been born."

"I'm not sure," Margaret said, half seriously, "but you would have been
a very good American."

This was not much of an admission, after all, but it was the most that
Margaret had ever made, and Mr. Lyon tried to get some encouragement out
of it. But he felt, as any man would feel, that this beating about the
bush, this talk of nationality and all that, was nonsense; that if a
woman loved a man she wouldn't care where he was born; that all the
world would be as nothing to him; that all conditions and obstacles
socie