bunch of violets at her belt, "that is why it is so difficult
for a man to keep a promise or a vow--even a marriage vow."

"Oh, I don't know." The bachelor leaned back and regarded the widow's
coronet braid through the smoke from his cigar. "It isn't the marriage
vows that are so difficult to keep. It's the fool vows a man makes
before marriage and the fool promises he makes afterward that he
stumbles over and falls down on. The marriage vows are so big and vague
that you can get all around them without actually breaking them, but if
they should interpolate concrete questions into the service such as, 'Do
you, William, promise not to growl at the coffee'----"

"Or 'Do you, Mary, promise never to put a daub of powder on your nose
again?'" broke in the widow.

"Nor to look twice at your pretty stenographer," continued the bachelor.

"Nor to lie about your age, or your foot or your waist measure."

"Nor to juggle with the truth whenever you stay out after half past
ten."

"Nor to listen to things that--that anybody--except your husband--may
say to you in the conservatory--oh, I see how it feels!" finished the
widow with a sympathetic little shudder.

"And yet," reflected the bachelor, "a woman is always exacting vows and
promises from the man she loves, always putting up bars--for him to jump
over; when if she would only leave him alone he would be perfectly
contented to stay within bounds and graze in his own pasture. A man
hates being pinned down; but a woman doesn't want anything around that
she can't pin down, from her belt and her theories to her hat and her
husband."

"Well," protested the widow, studying the toe of her slipper, "it is a
satisfaction to know you've got your husband fastened on straight by
his promises and held in place by his vows and that he loves you enough
to----"

"Usually," interrupted the bachelor, "a man loves you in inverse ratio
to his protestations. The lover who promises all things without reserve
is too often like the fellow who doesn't question the hotel bill nor ask
the price of the wine, because he doesn't intend to pay it anyway. The
fellow who is prodigal with vows and promises and poetry is generally
the one to whom such things mean nothing and, being of no value, can be
flung about generously to every girl he meets. The firm with the biggest
front office is likely to be the one with the smallest deposit in the
safe. The man who swears off loudest on New Year's is usually