o it. I believe that this popular demand for the
matrimony of others comes from our novel-reading. We get to thinking that
there is no other happiness or good-fortune in life except marriage; and
it's offered in fiction as the highest premium for virtue, courage,
beauty, learning, and saving human life. We all know it isn't. We know
that in reality marriage is dog cheap, and anybody can have it for the
asking--if he keeps asking enough people. By-and-by some fellow will wake
up and see that a first-class story can be written from the anti-marriage
point of view; and he'll begin with an engaged couple, and devote his
novel to disengaging them and rendering them separately happy ever after
in the denouement. It will make his everlasting fortune."

"Why don't you write it, Basil?" she asked. "It's a delightful idea. You
could do it splendidly."

He became fascinated with the notion. He developed it in detail; but at
the end he sighed and said: "With this 'Every Other Week' work on my
hands, of course I can't attempt a novel. But perhaps I sha'n't have it
long."

She was instantly anxious to know what he meant, and the novel and Miss
Leighton's affair were both dropped out of their thoughts. "What do you
mean? Has Mr. Fulkerson said anything yet?"

"Not a word. He knows no more about it than I do. Dryfoos hasn't spoken,
and we're both afraid to ask him. Of course, I couldn't ask him."

"No."

"But it's pretty uncomfortable, to be kept hanging by the gills so, as
Fulkerson says."

"Yes, we don't know what to do."

March and Fulkerson said the same to each other; and Fulkerson said that
if the old man pulled out, he did not know what would happen. He had no
capital to carry the thing on, and the very fact that the old man had
pulled out would damage it so that it would be hard to get anybody else
to put it. In the mean time Fulkerson was running Conrad's office-work,
when he ought to be looking after the outside interests of the thing; and
he could not see the day when he could get married.

"I don't know which it's worse for, March: you or me. I don't know, under
the circumstances, whether it's worse to have a family or to want to have
one. Of course--of course! We can't hurry the old man up. It wouldn't be
decent, and it would be dangerous. We got to wait."

He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos for some money; he did not need
any, but, he said maybe the demand would act as a hint upon him. One day,
about a wee