d by a theory. But no doubt the reader would prefer a
little straightforward narrative.

Well, Rosalind and Orlando, as we may as well call them, are two newly
married young people who've been married, say, a year, and who find
themselves at the end of it loving each other more than at the
beginning,--for you are to suppose two of the tenderest, most devoted
hearts that ever beat as one. However, they are young people of the
introspective modern type, with a new theory for everything.

About marriage and the law of happiness in that blessed estate, they
boasted the latest philosophical patents. To them, among other
matters, the secret of unhappy marriages was as simple as can be. It
was in nothing more or less than the excessive "familiarity" of
ordinary married life, and the lack of personal freedom allowed both
parties to the contract. Thus love grew commonplace, and the unhappy
ones to weary of each other by excessive and enforced association.
This was obvious enough, and the remedy as obvious,--separate bedrooms,
and a month's holiday in each year to be spent apart (notoriously all
people of quality had separate bedrooms, and see how happy they were!).
These and similar other safeguards of individual liberty they had in
mock-earnest drawn up and signed on their marriage eve, as a sort of
supplemental wedding service.

It would not be seemly to inquire how far certain of these conditions
had been kept,--how often, for example, Orlando's little hermit's bed
had really needed remaking during those twelve months! Answer, ye
birds of the air that lie in your snug nests, so close, so close,
through the tender summer nights, and maybe with two or three little
ones besides,--unless, indeed, ye too have felt the influence of the
Zeit-geist, and have taken to sleeping in separate nests.

The condition with which alone we have here to concern ourselves was
one which provided that each of the two lovers, hereafter to be called
the husband of the one part and the wife of the other part, solemnly
bound themselves to spend one calendar month of each year out of each
other's society, with full and free liberty to spend it wheresoever,
with whomsoever, and howsoever they pleased; and that this condition
was rigidly to be maintained, whatever immediate effort it might cost,
as the parties thereto believed that so would their love the more
likely maintain an enduring tenderness and an unwearied freshness. And
to this did Or