“Why”—­he would exclaim—­“I have walked miles to get a glimpse of a beautiful woman in a suburban window, and time and time again when I have seen a face in a passing brougham I have pursued it in a hansom, and learned where the owner of the face lived, and spent weeks in finding some one to present me, only to discover that she was self-conscious or uninteresting or engaged.  Still I had assured myself that she was not the one.  I am very conscientious, and I consider that it is my duty to go so far with every woman I meet as to be able to learn whether she is or is not the one, and the sad result is that I am like a man who follows the hounds but is never in at the death.”

“Well,” some married woman would say, grimly, “I hope you will get your deserts some day; and you will, too.  Some day some girl will make you suffer for this.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Carlton would answer, meekly.  “Lots of women have made me suffer, if that’s what you think I need.”

“Some day,” the married woman would prophesy, “you will care for a woman so much that you will have no eyes for any one else.  That’s the way it is when one is married.”

“Well, when that’s the way it is with me,” Carlton would reply, “I certainly hope to get married; but until it is, I think it is safer for all concerned that I should not.”

Then Carlton would go to the club and complain bitterly to one of his friends.

“How unfair married women are!” he would say.  “The idea of thinking a man could have no eyes but for one woman!  Suppose I had never heard a note of music until I was twenty-five years of age, and was then given my hearing.  Do you suppose my pleasure in music would make me lose my pleasure in everything else?  Suppose I met and married a girl at twenty-five.  Is that going to make me forget all the women I knew before I met her?  I think not.  As a matter of fact, I really deserve a great deal of credit for remaining single, for I am naturally very affectionate; but when I see what poor husbands my friends make, I prefer to stay as I am until I am sure that I will make a better one.  It is only fair to the woman.”

Carlton was sitting in the club alone.  He had that sense of superiority over his fellows and of irresponsibility to the world about him that comes to a man when he knows that his trunks are being packed and that his state-room is engaged.  He was leaving New York long before most of his friends could get away.  He did not know just where he was going, and preferred not to know.  He wished to have a complete holiday, and to see Europe as an idle tourist, and not as an artist with an eye to his own improvement.  He had plenty of time and money; he was sure to run across friends in the big cities, and acquaintances he could make or not, as he pleased, en route.  He was not sorry to go.  His going would serve to put an end to what gossip there might be of his engagement to numerous young women whose admiration for him as an artist, he was beginning to fear, had taken on a more personal tinge.  “I wish,” he said, gloomily, “I didn’t like people so well.  It seems to cause them and me such a lot of trouble.”