“No; it will mean at best a gently mitigated unhappiness to me—and I shall be glad of the gentle mitigation. To her it will mean nothing more than a pleasant friendship. I do not intend that it ever shall mean more than that to her.” “But why not? Why should it not mean everything to her that womanhood longs for? Why should you not win Evelyn’s love and make her your wife? I never knew two people better fitted to make each other happy, and fortunately you have possessions in Europe and at the North which will enable you to take a wife, no matter how disastrously this war may end for us of the South. Believe me, Owen, in creating men and women, God intended marriage and happiness in marriage for the common lot of humanity. He does not give it to all of us to be great, or to achieve great things, or to render great services, but, if we hearken to His voice as it whispers within us, He intends happiness for us, and His way of giving happiness is in marriage, prompted by love. We poor mortals interfere with Nature’s plan in many ways. Especially we sin by ‘match-making’—by bringing about marriages without love and for the sake of convenience of one kind or another. We wed bonds to city lots. We trade girls for titles, giving a money boot. We profane the holiest of human relations in order to join one plantation to another, or to unite two distinguished houses, or for some other equally devilish reason. “It is the best thing about this war that its tendency is to obliterate artificialities and restore men and women to natural conditions—at least here at the South. Believe me, Owen, the union of a man and a woman who really love each other, is the crowning fact of all existence. You and I are somewhat skilled in science. We know the truth that Nature is illimitably attentive not only to the preservation of the race, but to its improvement also; and we know that Nature takes no care whatever of the individual, but ruthlessly sacrifices him for the sake of the race. Nature is right, and we are criminally wrong when we thwart her purposes, as we do when we make marriages that have no love for their inspiration, or in any way bar marriage where love prompts it. I am old-fashioned, I suppose, but old fashions are sometimes good fashions. They are always so when they are the outgrowths of natural conditions. “Now put all that aside. I have had my little say. Let me hear what it was that you were going to say to me concerning Evelyn. I recognise your right, as you do not, to criticise in that quarter.” “Oh, I had no thought of criticising,” answered Kilgariff. “On the contrary, I am disposed to think you and I have made a valuable discovery in pedagogics.” “What is it?” “Why, that the best way to teach science is backward.” “I confess I do not understand.”