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.
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