A momentary silence followed the words. Even Crowdie made no remark, while both Hester and Katharine watched the elder man’s face, as women do when a man who has known the world well speaks seriously of love. “But then,” added Griggs himself, more lightly, and as though to destroy the impression he had made, “most people never go to either end of the path. They enter at one side, look up and down it, cross it, and go out at the other. Something frightens them, or they don’t like the colour of the roses, or they’re afraid of the thorns--in nine cases out of ten, something drives them out of it.” “How can one be driven out of love?” asked Katharine, gravely. “I put the thing generally, and adorned it with nice similes and things--and now you want me to explain all the details!” protested Griggs, with a little rough laugh. “How can one be driven out of love? In many ways, I fancy. By a real or imaginary fault of the other person in the path, I suppose, as much as by anything. It won’t do to stand at trifles when one loves. There’s a meaning in the words of the marriage service--‘for better, for worse.’” “I know there is,” said Katharine, growing pale, and choking herself with the words in the determination to be brave. “Of course there is. People don’t know much about one another when they get married. At least, not as a rule. They’ve met on the stage like actors in a play--and then, suddenly, they meet in private life, and are quite different people. Very probably the woman is jealous and extravagant, and has a temper, and has been playing the ingenuous young girl’s parts on the stage. And the man, who has been doing the self-sacrificing hero, who proposes to go without butter in order to support his starving mother-in-law, turns out to be a gambler--or drinks, or otherwise plays the fool. Of course that’s all very distressing to the bride or the bridegroom, as the case may be. But it can’t be helped. They’ve taken one another ‘for better, for worse,’ and it’s turned out to be for worse. They can go to Sioux City and get a divorce, but then that’s troublesome and scandalous, and one thing and another. So they just put up with it. Besides, they may love each other so much that the defects don’t drive them out of it. Then the bad one drags down the good one--or, in rare cases, the good one raises the bad one. Oh, yes--I’m not a cynic--that happens, too, from time to time.” Crowdie looked at his wife with his soft, languishing glance, and if Katharine had been watching him, she might have seen on his red lips the smile she especially detested. But she was looking down and pressing her hands together under the table. Hester Crowdie’s eyes were fixed on her face, for she was very pale and was evidently suffering. Griggs also looked at her, and saw that something unusual was happening.