hout fear of being
misunderstood or of having what he said retold and spoiled in the
telling. There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives, who painted pictures,
and young Sloane, who travelled for pleasure and adventure, and
Weimer, who stayed at home and wrote for the reviews. They were all
bachelors, and very good friends, and jealously guarded their little
circle from the intrusion of either men or women.

"Of course the chief objection to marriage," Stuart said--it was the
very day in which the picture had been sent to his rooms--"is the old
one that you can't tell anything about it until you are committed to
it forever. It is a very silly thing to discuss even, because there is
no way of bringing it about, but there really should be some sort of a
preliminary trial. As the man says in the play, 'You wouldn't buy a
watch without testing it first.' You don't buy a hat even without
putting it on, and finding out whether it is becoming or not, or
whether your peculiar style of ugliness can stand it. And yet men go
gayly off and get married, and make the most awful promises, and alter
their whole order of life, and risk the happiness of some lovely
creature on trust, as it were, knowing absolutely nothing of the new
conditions and responsibilities of the life before them. Even a
river-pilot has to serve an apprenticeship before he gets a license,
and yet we are allowed to take just as great risks, and only because
we _want_ to take them. It's awful, and it's all wrong."

"Well, I don't see what one is going to do about it," commented young
Sloane, lightly, "except to get divorced. That road is always open."

Sloane was starting the next morning for the Somali Country, in
Abyssinia, to shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matrimony was in
consequence somewhat slight.

"It isn't the fear of the responsibilities that keeps Stuart, nor any
one of us back," said Weimer, contemptuously. "It's because we're
selfish. That's the whole truth of the matter. We love our work, or
our pleasure, or to knock about the world, better than we do any
particular woman. When one of us comes to love the woman best, his
conscience won't trouble him long about the responsibilities of
marrying her."

"Not at all," said Stuart. "I am quite sincere; I maintain that there
should be a preliminary stage. Of course there can't be, and it's
absurd to think of it, but it would save a lot of unhappiness."

"Well," said Seldon, dryly, "when you've inve