r paternal instinct to a large
extent satisfied; but that is only a small part of marriage! It isn't
only that I want this house to be a home--that's merely a sentimental
feeling--but you need to love and be loved, and to have the anxious
care of someone close to you. There is nothing like marriage. It
probably is not quite as transcendental an affair as you think. That's
the mistake which intellectual people so often make--it's a very
natural and obvious thing--and of course it means far more to a woman
than to a man. But life is not complete without it. It is the biggest
fact which happens to us. I only want you just to keep it in your mind
as a possibility. Don't be afraid of it! My husband was your age when
he married me, and though I was very unreasonable in those days, I am
sure it was a happy thing for him, though he thought he was too old.
There, I don't want to press you, in this or in anything. I do not
think you will be happy living here without a wife, even if you go on
with Cambridge. But one can't mould things to one's wishes. My fault is
to want to organise everything for everybody, and I have made all my
worst blunders so. I hope I have given up all that. But if I live to
see it, the day when you come and tell me that you have won a wife will
be the next happiest day to the day when I found a son of my heart.
There, dear boy, I won't sentimentalise; but that's the truth; I shall
wake up to-morrow and for many days, feeling that some good fortune has
befallen me; but we should have found each other some time, even if I
had been a poor and miserable old woman. You have given me all that I
desired; give me a daughter too, if you can!"

"Well," said Howard, smiling, "I have no theory on the subject. I never
regarded marriage as either impossible or possible. It seemed to me
that one was either caught away in a fiery chariot, or else was left
under one's juniper tree; and I have been very comfortable there. I
thought I had all I wanted; and I feel a little dizzy now at the way in
which my cup of life has suddenly been seized and filled with wine to
the brim. One doesn't find a home and a mother and a wife in a
fortnight!"

"I don't know!" said Mrs. Graves, smiling at him. "Some of the best
marriages I know have been made in haste. I remember talking to a girl
the other day who was engaged to a man within ten days of the time they
had met. I said, 'Well, you have not wasted time.' 'Oh,' she said,
apparently