meal.
Nothing was lacking to make the picture of connubial felicity complete.

Some such thought occurred to Armitage, for suddenly he blurted out:

"Do you believe in marriage?"

She looked up in surprise.

"Do I believe in marriage?" she smiled. "What a singular question. Of
course I do."

"What do you understand by marriage?" he persisted.

Grace thought for a moment and then readily replied:

"Marriage is a contract entered into by a man and woman by which they
become husband and wife."

Nodding assent, he went on:

"That is to say, a contract entered into between themselves?"

"Not exactly," replied Grace hesitatingly. "Rather I should say an act
before a magistrate or a religious ceremony by which the legal
relationship is sanctioned by the law and church."

"Then, without such act or ceremony, you would not consider a marriage
binding or right?"

"No," answered Grace emphatically.

He remained silent a moment, and then he said:

"But suppose a man and a woman loved each other and wished to enter into
the married state, and yet were so placed that it was impossible for
their union to have the sanction of either the law or church, what
then?"

Grace laid down her work and, shaking her head, looked gravely at her
interlocutor:

"It is difficult to answer such a question offhand," she said. "I think
it would depend altogether on the circumstances and chiefly on the
personal views of those directly concerned. Some people scoff at
marriage. Among them are many of my own sex. They regard marriage merely
as a time-honored, worn out convention which really means nothing. They
get married, of course, not because they believe in it as an
institution, but as a matter of form, because their mothers did it
before them, because it is the thing to do. But not unreasonably, they
argue, that nowadays when it is so easy to obtain a divorce on the most
trivial pretext, there is not much left about marriage that is sacred
and binding."

He listened attentively. When she ceased speaking, he asked quietly:

"And what is your view? Do you indorse these opinions?"

"No, I do not," she replied, meeting his steady gaze frankly. "I
believe in marriage. I think it is the noblest gift that civilization
has bequeathed to the human race. It marks the great divide between man
and the brute. More than that, it protects the woman who is, naturally,
the weaker, and, above all, it protects the offspring."

"You are right,