“Pleasure is but the refreshment that cheers us in the pursuit of true happiness,” I answered, hoping to evade the direct question by a sententious phrase.

“I will not let you off so easily.  You shall answer my question,” he said.  He looked full at me with a deep searching gaze that seemed hardly warranted by the lightness of the argument.  I hesitated, and he impatiently leaned forward, uncrossing his legs and clasping his hands over one knee to bring himself nearer to me.

“Pleasure or happiness?” he repeated, “which is it to be?”

A sudden light flashed over my obscured intellect.

“Both,” I answered.  “Could you see the ideal woman as I would fain paint her to you, you would understand me better.  The pleasure you enjoy in the society of a noble and beautiful woman should be but the refreshment by the wayside as you journey through life together.  The day will come when she will be beautiful no longer, only noble and good, and true to you as to herself; and then, if pleasure has been to you what it should be, you will find that in the happiness attained it is no longer counted, or needed, or thought of.  It will have served its end, as the crib holds the ship in her place while she is building; and when your white-winged vessel has smoothly glided off into the great ocean of happiness, the crib and the stocks and the artificial supports will fall to pieces and be forgotten for ever.  Yet have they had a purpose, and have borne a very important part in the life of your ship.”

Having heard me attentively till I had finished, Isaacs relaxed his hold on his knee and threw himself back on the cushions, as if to entrench himself for a better fight.  I had made an impression on him, but he was not the man to own it easily.  Presumably to gain time, he called for hookahs and sherbet, and though the servants moved noiselessly in preparing them, their presence was an interruption.

When we were settled again he had taken a nearly upright position on the couch, and as he pulled at the long tube his face assumed that stolid look of Oriental indifference which is the most discouraging shower-bath to the persuasive powers.  I had really no interest in converting him to my own point of view about women.  Honestly, was it my own point of view at all?  Would anything under heaven induce me, Paul Griggs, rich, or poor, or comfortably off, to marry any one—­Miss Westonhaugh, for instance?  Probably not.  But then my preference for single blessedness did not prevent me from believing that women have souls.  That morning the question of the marriage of the whole universe had been a matter of the utmost indifference, and now I, a confirmed and hopelessly contented bachelor, was trying to convince a man with three wives that matrimony was a most excellent thing in its way, and that the pleasure of the honeymoon was but the faint introduction to the bliss of the silver wedding.  It certainly must be Isaacs’ own doing.  He had launched on a voyage of discovery and had taken me in tow.  I had a strong suspicion that he wanted to be convinced, and was playing indifference to soothe his conscience.