Stuart loved his work better than he knew, but how well he loved Miss Delamar neither he nor his friends could tell.  She was the most beautiful and lovely creature that he had ever seen, and of that only was he certain.

Stuart was sitting in the club one day when the conversation turned to matrimony.  He was among his own particular friends, the men before whom he could speak seriously or foolishly without 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 invented a way to prevent marriage from being a lottery, let me know, will you?” He stood up and smiled nervously.  “Any of you coming to see us to-night?” he asked.