if you should be lucky enough to find another--another--"

"Tenant for your heart?" suggested the bachelor, helpfully.

The widow nodded.

"There would be the agony," she went on, "of getting used to him or
her."

"And the torture," added the bachelor, with a faint shudder, "of going
through with the wedding ceremony again and of walking up a green and
yellow church aisle with a green and yellow feeling and a stiff new
coat, and the gaping multitude gazing at you as if you were a new
specimen of crocodile or a curio or----"

"It takes nearly all of one lifetime," interrupted the widow,
impatiently, "to get used to one wife or husband; but, according to the
'trial marriage' idea, just as you had gotten somebody nicely trained
into all your little ways and discovered how to manage him----"

"And to bluff him," interpolated the bachelor.

"And what to have for dinner when you were going to show him the bill
for a new hat," proceeded the widow, "and how to keep him at home
nights----"

"And to separate him from his money," remarked the bachelor,
sarcastically.

"And to make him see things your way," concluded the widow, "it would
be time to pack up your trunks and leave. Any two people," she
continued, meditatively, "can live together fairly comfortably after
they have discovered the path around one another's nerves--the little
things not to say and not to do in order to avoid friction, and the
little things to say and to do that will oil the matrimonial wheels. But
it would take all the 'trial' period to get the domestic machine
running, and then----"

"You'd be running after another soul-mate," finished the bachelor,
sympathetically.

"Yes." The widow crossed the red kid toes and then drew them quickly
under the ruffles of her skirts as she caught the bachelor staring at
them. "And--I've--forgotten what I was going to say," she finished,
turning the color of her slippers.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said the bachelor, consolingly.

"What!"

"It doesn't matter what you say," explained the bachelor, "it's the way
you say it, and----"

"About soul-mates," broke in the widow, collecting herself, "there'd
always be the chance," she pursued hurriedly, "that you'd have to take a
second-hand one."

"Sometimes," remarked the bachelor, blowing a smoke ring and gazing
through it at the place where the widow's toes had been, "second-hand
goods are more attractive than cheap, new articles. For instance,
widows----