"THERE," said the bachelor, as he nodded amiably at the big, jolly-looking man beside the little, weazened woman, "is the best husband the Lord ever made!"
"The Lord!" said the widow scornfully. "It isn't the Lord who makes husbands. It's the wife!"
"And I always thought God made Adam," sighed the bachelor, humbly.
"Adam," said the widow promptly, as she dropped another lump of sugar into her tea, "wasn't a husband. He was only a man. And a man is only—raw material. He is like a ready-made frock or a ready-made coat; he has got to be cut down and built upand ironed out and taken in and to have all the raw edges trimmed off before he is properly——"
"Finished?" suggested the bachelor.
The widow nodded cheerfully.
"Yes," she agreed, "and adjusted to matrimony. And even then sometimes he is a dreadful botch."
"And all his style is gone," sighed the bachelor.
The widow studied her Sévres cup thoughtfully.
"Well," she admitted, "sometimes the material is so bad or so skimpy—"
"So—what?"
The widow smiled patiently.
"Skimpy," she repeated. "There is so little to some men that the cleverest woman couldn't patch them upinto a full-sized specimen. They are like the odds and ends left on the remnant counter. You have to do the best you can with them and then use Christian Science to make yourself believe they are all there and that the patches don't show. Haven't you ever seen magnificent women trailing little annexes after them like echoes or—or——"
"Captives in the wake of a conquering queen?" broke in the bachelor.
The widow studied her Sévres cupas thepurple plume on her hat danced.
"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at the last moment and made over to fit the situation—which they never do."
The bachelor set down his teacupwith the light of revelation in his eyes.
"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked out on purpose to act as shadows or—or satellites."
"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gifts. You can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of the lot."
"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor,"that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take the left-overs."
The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.
"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got it home, orhow it will make up or whether it will fade or run or shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select something serviceable—dull and virtuous and worthy and all that—and he may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles——"
"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.
"Yes," agreed the widow, "and thewildest 'jolly good fellow' will often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."
"Humph," protested the bachelor, "but when you catch 'em wild and tame 'em, how do you know they are not going to break the harness or burst the basting threads?"
The widow considered a moment.
"You don't," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But there is a great deal in catching the wild variety and domesticating them while they are young. Of course, it's utterly impossible to subdue a lion after he has got his second teeth, and it's utterly foolish to try to reform a man—after he is thirty or has begun to lose his hair. Besides," she added, "there is somuch in the woman who does the training and the making over. There are some women who could spoil the finest masculine cloth in the world by too much cutting and ripping and—and nagging; while there are others who can give a man or a house or a frock just the touch that will perfect them."
"How do they do it?" asked the bachelor enthusiastically. "Take 'em by the nape of the neck and——"
"IF we're such a lot, why do you marry us?" Page 126"IF we're such a lot, why do you marry us?"Page 126
"IF we're such a lot, why do you marry us?"
Page 126
"Mercy, no!" cried the widow. "They take them unawares. The well-trained husband never knows what has happened to him. He only knows that, after ten years of matrimony, he is ashamed to acknowledge his own youthful picture. He has been literally re-formed in everything from his collars and the wayhe parts his hair to his morals and the way he signs his name. The best husbands aren't caught; they're made. And the luckiest woman isn't the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the most out of the man she marries."
"But," protested the bachelor, "if we're such a lot and such a lottery, why do you marry us at all?"
The widow looked up in surprise and stopped with her cup poised in midair.
"Why do we wear frocks, Mr. Travers?" she asked witheringly. "Why do we pompadour our hair or eat with forks or go to pink teas? Marriage is a custom; and if a woman doesn't marry she is simply non—non——"
"Compos mentis?" inquired the bachelor, helpfully.
"Well, yes," said the widow, "but that wasn't what I meant. What is the Latin for 'not in it'? Her father looks at her accusingly every time he has to pay her dressmaker's bill and her mother looks at her commiseratingly every time she comes home without being engaged and all her friends look at her as if she were a curiosity or—or a failure. And besides, she misses her mission in life. That was what the Lord put Eve in the world for—to give the finishing touches to Adam."
"She finished him all right!" exclaimed the bachelor fervently.
"Making a living," went on the widow scorning the insinuation, "or making a career or making fame ora fortune isn't the real forte of woman. It's making a husband—out of a man."
"I should think," said the bachelor setting down his teacup and leaning back comfortably in his chair, "that they would form a corporation and set up a factory where they could turn 'em out by the dozen or the crate—or—-"
"Pooh!" cried the widow, "a husband is a work of art and has to be made by hand. He can't be turned out by machinery like a chromo or a lithograph. And, besides, if you want a ready-made one you can always find plenty of them on the second-hand counter——"
"On the—where?"
"Where they keep the widowers," explained the widow. "If a womanisn't interested or clever enough to manufacture her own husband, she can always find some man who has been modeled by another woman. And she has the satisfaction of knowing exactly what she's getting and just what to expect. The only trouble is that, in case she makes a mistake in her choice, she never has a chance to make him over. He has been cut down and relined and faced and patched already to his limit."
"And his seams are apt to be shiny and his temper frayed at the edges," declared the bachelor.
"And you have to be very sure that he fits your disposition."
"And matches your taste."
"And that he won't pinch on the bank account."
"Nor stretch on the truth."
"And that the other woman hasn't botched him."
"And even then he's a hand-me-down—and may shrink or run or—"
"Oh, widowers don't shrink or run," retorted the widow. "Matrimony is a habit with them, and they feel like a cab-horse out of harness without it. They long to feel the bit between their teeth and the gentle hand on the reins——"
"And the basting threads," added the bachelor. "I wonder what it's like," he went on, meditatively.
"You'll never know," said the widow, setting her cup on the tabourette. "You're too old."
"Yes, I've got my second teeth," sighed the bachelor.
"And your bald spot."
"And I've sown my second crop of wild oats."
"And yet," said the widow leaning her chin in her hand and looking up thoughtfully under her purple feather, "it would be a great triumph——"
"I won't be put in harness!" protested the bachelor.
The widow considered him gravely.
"There's plenty of material in you," she declared. "You could be trimmed off and cut down and——"
"I'm too tough to cut!"
"And relined."
"I'm almost moth-eaten now!" moaned the bachelor.
The widow leaned forward and scrutinized him with interest.
"It would be a pity," she saidslowly, "to let the wrong woman botch you. The next time you propose to me," she added thoughtfully, "I think I'll——"
"Did I ever propose to you?" broke in the bachelor with real fright.
"Oh, lots of times," said the widow; "it's almost a habit now."
"But you refused me!" pleaded the bachelor. "Say you refused me."
"I did," said the widow promptly. "I wasn't looking for—remnants."
"Never mind!" retorted the bachelor. "Some day you may find I've been grabbed up."
"You'll have lost all your—starch and style by then," said the widow as she patted her back hair and started for the door.
The bachelor followed, putting on his gloves.
"How do you know that?" he asked, when they had bidden their hostess good-afternoon and stood on the portico saying goodby.
"Well," said the widow, "it would take an artist to make you over. The wrong woman would utterly ruin you."
"And who is the wrong woman?" The bachelor tried to look into the widow's eyes beneath the purple feather.
But the widow only glanced out over the lawn and swung her parasol.
"Who is the wrong woman?" persisted the bachelor.
The widow studied the tip of her patent leather toe.
"Who is the wrong woman?"
The widow looked up suddenly under her violet feather.
"The other woman," she said softly, "of course."
"ISN'T all this talk about 'trial marriages' absurd?" remarked the widow, laying her newspaper on the tabourette and depositing two small red kid toes on the edge of the fender.
"It is," agreed the bachelor, cheerfully, with his eyes on the red kid toes, "considering that all marriages are—trials."
"Just fancy," went on the widow, scornfully, ignoring the flippancy, "being leased to a husband or wife for a period of years, like a flat or a yacht or—or——"
"A second-hand piano," suggested the bachelor.
"And knowing," continued thewidow, gazing contemplatively into the fire, "that when the lease or the contract or whatever it is expired, unless the other party cared to renew it, you would be on the market again."
"And probably in need of all sorts of repairs," added the bachelor, reflectively, "in your temper and your complexion and your ideas."
"Yes," sighed the widow, "ten years of married life will rub all the varnish off your manners, and all the color off your illusions and all the finish off your conversation."
"And the hinges of your love making and your pretty speeches are likely to creak every time you open your mouth," affixed the bachelor, gloomily.
"And you are bound to be old-fashioned,"concluded the widow, with conviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands with all the modern improvements. Besides," she continued, thoughtfully, "even 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 newspecimen 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 yourway," 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——"
"Oh, widows!" interrupted the widow impatiently, "They're different. They're like heirlooms—only parted with at death. But it would be different with a wife who was relinquished because she wasn't wanted. If anybody is anxious to get rid of something it is a pretty sure sign that it isn't worth having. It's nearly always got a flaw somewhere and it's seldom what it is represented to be. Besides, I've noticed that the woman who can't get along with one husband, usually finds it just as difficult to get along with another."
"There would always be the chance," protested the bachelor, "that you might get the party who had done the discarding."
"And who might want to do it again," objected the widow triumphantly."Just imagine," she added irrelevantly, "living with a person whom somebody else had trained!"
"Oh, that would have its advantages," declared the bachelor. "A horse broken to harness is always easier to handle."
"Perhaps," agreed the widow leaning back and thoughtlessly putting her red kid toes on the fender again, "but when two horses are going to travel together it is always best for them to get used to one another's gait from the first. Don't you look at it that way?"
"Which way?" asked the bachelor, squinting at the fender with his head on the side.
"Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man who had been encouraged to take aninterest in the household affairs and having him following you about picking up things after you; or one, whose first wife had trained him to sit by the fire in the evening, and whom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or one who had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over the furniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"
"Or to a wife," interpolated the bachelor, "who had always handled the funds and monopolized the conversation and chosen her husband's collars and who threw all her past husbands at you every time you did something she wasn't used to or objected to something she was used to."
"Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid thingstwo people could say to one another."
"Such as 'Just wait until the lease is up!'" suggested the bachelor.
The widow nodded.
"Or, 'The next time I marry, I'll be careful not to take anybody with red hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.
"That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "It wouldn't last forever! And the knowledge that it wouldn't would be such an anæsthetic."
"Such a what!" the widow sat up so suddenly that both toes slipped from the fender and her heels landed indignantly on the floor.
"It would be the lump of sugar," explained the bachelor, "that would take away the bitter taste and make you able to swallow all the trialsmore easily. It's the feeling that a painful operation won't last long that makes it possible to grin and bear it. Besides, it would do away with all sorts of crimes, like divorce and wife murder and ground glass in the coffee. Knowing that the marriage was only temporary and that we were only sort of house-party guests might make us more polite and agreeable and entertaining, so as to leave a good impression behind us."
"I do believe," cried the widow, sitting up straight and looking at the bachelor accusingly, "that you're arguing in favor of 'trial marriage.'"
"I'm not arguing in favor of marriage at all," protested the bachelor plaintively. "But marrying for life is like putting the whole dinner on the table at once. It takes away yourappetite. Marrying on trial would be more like serving it in courses."
"And changing the course would be such a strain," declared the widow. "Why, when the contract was up how would you know how to divide things—the children and—"
"The dog and the cat."
"And all the little mementos you had collected together and the things you had shared in common and the favorite arm chair and the things you had grown used to and fond of——"
"Oh, well, in that case," remarked the bachelor, "you might have grown so used to and fond of one another that when it came to the parting of the ways, you would not want to part them. After all," he went on soberly, "if 'trial marriages' were put into effect, they would end nine times outof ten in good old fashioned matrimony. A man can get as accustomed to a woman as he does to a pipe or a chair——"
"What!"
"And a woman," pursued the bachelor, "can become as attached to a man and as fond of him as she is of an old umbrella or a pair of old shoes that have done good service. No matter how battered or worn they may become, nor how many breaks there are in them, we can never find anything to quite take their place. Matrimony, after all, is just a habit; and husbands and wives become habits—habits that however disagreeable they may be we don't want to part with. 'Trial marriages,' even if they should be tried, wouldn't alter things much. As long as two peoplecan stand one another they will cling together anyhow, and if they can't they won't anyhow; and whether it's a run out lease or a divorce or prussic acid that separates them doesn't make much difference. Custom, not the wedding certificate, is the tie that binds most of us. The savage doesn't need any laws to hold him to the woman of his choice. Habit does it; and if habit doesn't the woman will!"
The widow sighed and leaned back in her chair.
"I suppose so," she said, "but it seems dreadfully dreary."
"What seems dreadfully dreary?" inquired the bachelor.
"Matrimony," replied the widow solemnly. "It IS like those old chairs and pipes and shoes and things you were speaking of; it's full ofholes and breaks and bare spots, and it won't always work—but there's nothing that will quite take the place of it."
"Nothing," said the bachelor, promptly. "That's why I want to—"
The widow rose quickly and shook out her skirts.
"Now, don't begin that, Billy," she said, trying to be severe, "you're too old!"
"Oh, well, I'm still in good repair," protested the bachelor.
The widow shook her head.
"All the varnish is worn off your ideals," she objected, "and the hinges of your enthusiasm creak and you've got a bare spot on the top of your head, and——"
"NO," said the widow, "you're shop-worn." Page 149"NO," said the widow, "you're shop-worn."Page 149
"NO," said the widow, "you're shop-worn."
Page 149
"But I've most of the modern improvements," broke in the bachelor,desperately, "and I'm not second-hand, anyway!"
"No," said the widow, looking him over critically, "you're shop-worn. But, originally, you were an attractive article, and you're genuine and good style and well preserved, and if——"
"Well?" The bachelor looked up expectantly.
"If there WERE such a thing as 'trial marriages'—" The widow hesitated again.
"You'd give me a trial?" asked the bachelor eagerly.
"Oh," said the widow, studying the toes of her red slippers, "it wouldn't be—such a trial!"
"WHO is the ideal woman?" asked the widow pensively, laying down her embroidery hoop and clasping her hands behind her head.
The bachelor blew a smoke ring reflectively and squinted through it at the widow.
"You've got powder on your nose!" he remarked disapprovingly.
The widow snatched up a diaphanous lace handkerchief and began rubbing her nose.
"Have I got too much on?" she asked anxiously.
"Any," replied the bachelor, with dignified scorn, "is too much—in a man's eyes."
The widow laughed and stopped rubbing her nose.
"But it isn't in his eyes," she protested, "if it is put on so artistically that he doesn't see it. Getting it on straight is such an art!" and the widow sighed.
"Black art, you mean," exclaimed the bachelor disgustedly. "A made-up woman is like paste jewelry and imitation bric-a-brac. She looks cheap and unsubstantial and as though she wouldn't wear well. Even granting that you aren't half good enough for us——"
"What!"
"And that you don't come up to our standards——"
The widow dropped her embroidery hoop and sat up with blazing eyes.
"You flatter yourself, Mr. Travers!"
"No, I don't!" retorted the bachelor. "It's you who flatter us, when you think it necessary to plaster over your defects and put additions on your figures and rouge on your cheeks and frills on your manners. As a matter of fact," he added decisively, "a man's ideal is a natural woman with a natural complexion and natural hair and natural ways and natural self-respect."
The widow sighed and took up her embroidery hoop again.
"I used to think so, too," she said sadly.
The bachelor lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Before I discovered," she explained,"that it was just as often a woman with butter-colored hair and a tailor-made figure and a 'past' and a manufactured 'bloom of health.' The truth is," she concluded, stabbing her needle very carefully into the centre of an unhealthy looking green silk rose, "that no two men admire the same woman, and no one man admires the same thing in two women. Now, there's Miss Gunning, who wears a sweater and says 'damn' and is perfectly natural and self-respecting and——"
"No man gets ecstatic over a bad imitation of himself!" expostulated the bachelor.
"Then why," said the widow, laying down her needle and fixing the bachelor with a glittering eye, "do you spend so much time on the golflinks, and out driving and hunting and walking with her?"
"Because," explained the bachelor, meekly, "she sometimes hits the ball, and she can sit in her saddle without being tied there, and she doesn't grab the reins nor call a 'hoof' a 'paw.' But," he added fervently, "I'd take my hat and run if she asked me to spend my life with her."
"Oh, well," the widow tossed her head independently. "She won't. Miss Gunning can take care of herself."
"That's just it!" pursued the bachelor. "The very fact that she can take care of herself and get across gutters alone and pick up things for herself and handle her own horse and beat me at golf and tennis, takes away that gratifying sense of protection—"
"And superiority," interposed the widow softly.
"That a man likes to feel toward a woman," concluded the bachelor, ignoring her. "Muscle and biceps and a 32-inch waist," he added, "are 'refreshing,' but in time they get on your nerves. It may not be immoral for a dear little thing to say 'damn,' but it affects a man just as it would to hear a canary bird squawking like a parrot. When a chap is going for a walk cross country he may pick out the girl with the stride and the strong back, who can leap a fence and help herself over puddles, to accompany him, but when he is ready for a walk to the altar he naturally prefers somebody who understands the art of leaning gently on the masculine armand who hasn't any rough edges or——"
"Sharp points of view," suggested the widow.
"Or opinions on the equality of the sexes," added the bachelor.
"Or on politics."
"Or the higher life."
"Or on anything but the latest way to curl her hair and make over a hat," finished the widow. "Isn't it funny," she added thoughtfully twisting a French knot into the centre of the sickly green rose, "how many men idealize a fool?"
The bachelor started.
"I—-I beg your pardon," he stammered.
"All a woman has got to know in order to wear a halo," went on the widow, calmly fastening the Frenchknot with a jerk of her needle, "is how to keep it on straight. All a man demands of her is the negative virtues and the knowledge of how not to do things; how not to think, how not to argue, how not to nag, how not to theorize, how not to be athletic, how not to spend money, how not to take care of herself, how not——"
"You've got your ideas into a French knot!" broke in the bachelor desperately. "You're all tangled up in the thread of your argument. It isn't how not to do things but how to do them that is important to a woman. It isn't what she does but how she does it that matters. She may commit a highway murder or low down burglary; and if she does it in a ruffled skirt and a picture hat any man will forgive her. Hermorals may be as crooked and dark as a lane at midnight; but if her manners are smooth and gentle and guileless and tender she can deceive the cleverest man alive into believing her a nun. It isn't what she says but how she says it that counts. There are some women who could read your death warrant or repeat the multiplication table in such a confiding voice and with such a tender glance that you would want to take them in your arms and thank them for it. It isn't what a woman wears but how she wears it; it's not her beauty nor her talents nor her frocks that make her fascinating, but her ways, the little earmarks of femininity that God put on every creature born to wear petticoats; and if she's got those she may be a Lucretia Borgia or aBloody Mary at heart; she may be brown or yellow or pale green; she may be old or young, big or little, stupid or clever, and still wear a beautiful halo. The trouble," he added, flicking the end of his cigar thoughtfully, "is not with man's ideal but with woman's deal. She holds all the cards, but she plays them badly. When a two-spot of flattery would win her point, she deals a chap the queen of arguments; when the five of smiles would take the trick for her, she plays the deuce of a pout. When the ace of sympathy or the ten of tact would put the whole game of love into her hands, she thinks it is time to be funny and flings a man the joker."
The widow laid her work on the table beside her, folded her hands inher lap and smiled at the bachelor sweetly.
"That's just what I said," she remarked, gently.
"What you said!"
The widow nodded and rubbed her nose reminiscently with the end of her handkerchief.
"Yes," she replied, "it isn't putting powder on your nose or rouge on your cheeks or perfume on your petticoats or a broad 'A' on your accent that shocks a man, but putting them on inartistically. It isn't the things you do but the things you overdo that offend masculine taste. It's the 'over-done' woman that a man hates—the woman who is over-dressed or overly made-up, or overly cordial or overly flattering, or overly clever, or overly good, or overly anything.He doesn't want to see how the wheels go around at the toilet table or in a woman's head or her heart; and it's the subtle, illusive little thing that he doesn't notice until he steps on her and finds her looking up adoringly at him under his nose that he idealizes."
"And marries," added the bachelor conclusively.
"And then forgets," sighed the widow, "while he goes off to amuse himself with the obvious person with peroxide hair and a straight-front figure. I don't know," she added tentatively, "that it's much fun being an ideal woman."
"Who said you were?" demanded the bachelor suddenly.
The widow started and turned pink to her chin.
"Oh—nobody—that is, several people, Mr. Travers."
"Had you refused them?" asked the bachelor thoughtfully.
The widow blushed a deeper pink and bent over her pale green rose so low that the bachelor could not see her eyes.
"Why—that is—I don't see what that has to do with it."
"It has everything to do with," replied the bachelor positively.
"And you haven't told me yet," continued the widow, suddenly changing the subject, "whom you consider the ideal woman."
"Don't you know?" asked the bachelor insinuatingly.
The widow shook her head without lifting her eyes.
"Well, then, she is—but so many of them have told you."
"You haven't," persisted the widow.
The bachelor sighed and rose to go.
"The ideal woman," he said, as he slipped on his gloves, "is—the woman you can't get. Is that the firelight playing on your pompadour?" he added, looking down upon the widow through half-closed eyes. "Do you know—for a moment—I thought it was a halo."
"ISN'T it hard," said the widow, glancing ruefully at the holly-wreathed clock above the mantel-piece, "to know where to begin reforming yourself?"
"Great heavens!" exclaimed the bachelor, "you are not going to do anything like that, are you?"
The widow pointed solemnly to the hands of the clock, which indicated 11.30, and then to the calendar, on which hung one fluttering leaf marked December 31.
"It is time," she sighed, "to begin our mental housecleaning, to sweep out our collection of last year's follies, and dust off our petty sins and fling away our old vices and——"
"That's the trouble!" broke in the bachelor. "It's so hard to know just what to throw away and what to keep. Making New Year's resolutions is like doing the spring housecleaning or clearing out a drawer full of old letters and sentimental rubbish. You know that there are lots of things you ought to get rid of, and that are just in the way, and that you would be better off without, but the minute you make up your mind to part with anything, even a tiny, insignificant vice, it suddenly becomes so dear and attractive that you repent and begin to take a new interest in it. The only time I ever had to be taken home in a cab was the day after I promised to sign the pledge," and the bachelor sighed reminiscently.
"And the only time I ever overdrewmy bank account," declared the widow, "was the day after I had resolved to economize. I suppose," she added pensively, "that the best way to begin would be to pick out the worst vice and discard that."
"And that will leave heaps of room for the others and for a lot of new little sins, besides, won't it?" agreed the bachelor cheerfully. "Well," he added philosophically, "I'll give up murdering."
"What!" The widow started.
"Don't you want me to?" asked the bachelor plaintively, rubbing his bald spot. "Or perhaps I might resolve not to commit highway robbery any more, or to stop forging, or——"
"All of which is so easy!" broke in the widow sarcastically.
"There'd be some glory and somereason in giving up a big vice," sighed the bachelor, "if a fellow had one. But the trouble is that most of us men haven't any big criminal tendencies, merely a heap of little follies and weaknesses that there isn't any particular virtue in sacrificing or any particular harm in keeping."
"And which you always do keep, in spite of all your New Year's vows," remarked the widow ironically.
"Huh!" The bachelor laughed cynically. "It's our New Year's vows that help us to keep 'em. The very fact that a fellow has sworn to forego anything, whether it's a habit or a girl, makes it more attractive. I've thrown away a whole box of cigars with the finest intentions in the world and then gotten up in themiddle of the night to fish the pieces out of the waste basket. And that midnight smoke was the sweetest I ever had. It was sweeter than the apples I stole when I was a kid and than the kisses I stole when——"
"If you came here to dilate on the joys of sin, Mr. Travers," began the widow coldly.
"And," proceeded the bachelor, "I've made up my mind to stop flirting with a girl, because I found out that she was beginning to—to——"
"I understand," interrupted the widow sympathetically.
"And by jove!" finished the bachelor, "I had to restrain myself to keep from going back and proposing to her!"
"How lucky you did!" commented the widow witheringly.
"But I wouldn't have," explained the bachelor ruefully, "if the girl had restrained herself."
"Nevertheless," repeated the widow, "is was lucky—for the girl."
"Which girl?" asked the bachelor. "The girl I broke off with or the girl that came afterward?"
"I suppose," mused the widow, ignoring the levity and leaning over to arrange a bunch of violets at her belt, "that is why it is so difficult for a man to keep a promise or a vow—even a marriage vow."
"Oh, I don't know." The bachelor leaned back and regarded the widow's coronet braid through the smoke from his cigar. "It isn't the marriage vows that are so difficult to keep. It's the fool vows a man makes before marriage and the foolpromises he makes afterward that he stumbles over and falls down on. The marriage vows are so big and vague that you can get all around them without actually breaking them, but if they should interpolate concrete questions into the service such as, 'Do you, William, promise not to growl at the coffee'——"
"Or 'Do you, Mary, promise never to put a daub of powder on your nose again?'" broke in the widow.
"Nor to look twice at your pretty stenographer," continued the bachelor.
"Nor to lie about your age, or your foot or your waist measure."
"Nor to juggle with the truth whenever you stay out after half past ten."
"Nor to listen to things that—thatanybody—except your husband—may say to you in the conservatory—oh, I see how it feels!" finished the widow with a sympathetic little shudder.
"And yet," reflected the bachelor, "a woman is always exacting vows and promises from the man she loves, always putting up bars—for him to jump over; when if she would only leave him alone he would be perfectly contented to stay within bounds and graze in his own pasture. A man hates being pinned down; but a woman doesn't want anything around that she can't pin down, from her belt and her theories to her hat and her husband."
"Well," protested the widow, studying the toe of her slipper, "it is a satisfaction to know you've gotyour husband fastened on straight by his promises and held in place by his vows and that he loves you enough to——"
"Usually," interrupted the bachelor, "a man loves you in inverse ratio to his protestations. The lover who promises all things without reserve is too often like the fellow who doesn't question the hotel bill nor ask the price of the wine, because he doesn't intend to pay it anyway. The fellow who is prodigal with vows and promises and poetry is generally the one to whom such things mean nothing and, being of no value, can be flung about generously to every girl he meets. The firm with the biggest front office is likely to be the one with the smallest deposit in the safe. The man who swears off loudest on NewYear's is usually the one they have to carry home the morning after. And the chap who promises a girl a life of roses is the one who will let her pick all the thorns off for herself."
"Perhaps," sighed the widow, chewing the stem of a violet thoughtfully, "the best way to cure a man of a taste for anything, after all, is to let him have too much of it, instead of making him swear off. If you want him to hate the smell of a pipe insist on his smoking one all the time. If you want him to sign the temperance pledge serve him wine with every course. If you want him to hate a woman invite her to meet him every time he calls, and tell him how 'suitable' she would be."
"And if you want him to love you," finished the bachelor, "don't ask himto swear it, but tell him that he really ought not to. The best way to manage a donkey—human or otherwise—is to turn his head in the wrong direction, and he'll back in the right one."
"Then," said the widow decisively, "we ought to begin the New Year by making some irresolutions."
"Some—what?"
"Vows that we won't stop doing the things we ought not to do," explained the widow.
"All right," agreed the bachelor thoughtfully, "I'll make an irresolution to go on making love to you as much as I like."
"You mean as much as I like, Mr. Travers," corrected the widow severely.
"How much do you like?" askedthe bachelor, leaning over to look into the widow's eyes.
The widow kicked the corner of the rug tentatively.
"I like—all but the proposing," she said slowly. "You really ought to stop that——"
"I'm going to stop it—to-night," said the bachelor firmly.
The widow looked up in alarm.
"Oh, you don't have to commence keeping your resolutions until to-morrow morning," she said quickly.
"And you are going to stop refusing me—to-night," continued the bachelor firmly.
The widow studied the corner of the rug with great concern.