“Pshaw!” returned Tranton. “The translator would probably lose her zest if she were in the house. My translator was willing to be a translator. You married men—” “Now hold on, Tranton. That is an abstract proposition. Don’t make it personal. Have you acquired that from—” “Hold on, yourself!” retorted Tranton. “Your proposition is abstract enough, but—well, we are both open to suspicion, I suppose. A man and a woman who meet occasionally are one thing—I mean that they are two; whereas if the same were married—to each other—they would be quite another,—that is to say, one. When they are one they must lose the charm, the entertainment, the stimulus of being two.” “Rot!” was my friendly comment on this. But Tranton went on:— “Can’t you see,” he pursued, playfully knocking the pipe against the desk as if it were my head, “can’t you see the interest of intermittent associations in which all themes are relatively new and are never quite exhausted? What is it that makes marriage so stupid except to the accidentally right pair?—the certainty that the two who have become one will get talked out. It must be like talking to one’s self. In society it is different. You can’t get talked out. You can hardly get started, and a person must be a tremendous bore to give himself away with so small a chance. Thus you see it is very democratic and levelling. The brilliant don’t have too much swing and the stupid are not crushed. There are men who are immense fun—once; girls who are witty and fascinating—the first time. Others have a long run,—for weeks, months, even years. But you can’t say how long a run they would have if you married them.” “Tranton,” I said, “that is the way you talk to them. I know you. I simply won’t listen to your make-believe.” “Oh, I am told that girls change a good deal during their married era,” went on Tranton, blowing the smoke at his bronze mandarin; “that would help keep it from being monotonous. Marriage itself is bound to change us when less revolutionary things are so potent. Take Grimsedge. Before he had his butler he was one man. After he had his butler he was quite another. He recognizes it himself. If he were writing his life I have no doubt but that he would divide the whole scheme into B. B.—Before Butler, and A. B.—After Butler. A woman’s married life, as I have been told repeatedly by women themselves, is full of change. Her constantly fluctuating estimate of her husband is one influence,—perhaps enough to account for everything. A friend of mine on the exchange told me the other night that his wife had gone through so many phases that when he reviewed his domestic career he felt as if he had been married to half a dozen different women. Now a man without a bigamous mind—” “Tranton,” I interposed, “I have heard women speak of you as a nice man;—what did they mean?”