"Ah, you do me an injustice," she said quickly. "I am just as serious as ever I was, but I realize that it is no use being serious in public. People have no time to spare from their amusements nowadays for anything serious. But in private I am serious. I was serious in private to-day, for instance." "Well, be serious now, and tell me what you were serious about." "Oh, nothing. I beg your pardon, this is not in public. Indeed, it was something--something big, as it seems to me. I am not sure that I shall tell you about it." They were both silent a moment--he unwilling to ask a question on a subject where she hesitated, she weighing in her mind whether or not she should tell him. At last she spoke. "It is about Maud Brereton," she said, "She came to me yesterday, calm as a summer sea, to ask my advice as to whether she should marry Anthony Maxwell, just as I might ask your advice as to whether I should have a picture framed in gold or white. I did not ask her any questions as to whether she loved him, because I believe that there are many girls who have no idea what that means, and I think Maud is one of them." Jim got up and began to walk up and down the room. He heard Marie with his ear speaking of Maud, but his inward ear translated, so it seemed to him, all she said of Maud into things she was saying about herself. "Now, I am sufficiently modern," she went on, "not to wish all girls who do not feel passion to abstain from marrying. I believe that quite happy marriages often take place without it. Either the man or the woman may not feel it, yet by marrying they are both happier than they would have been if they had remained single. The ultimate sum of happiness is a large factor, Jim. Do you not think so?" Again she seemed to be talking of herself, but now he could not decide whether she was speaking with complete sincerity. Her opinions, at any rate, appeared to him monstrous. "Finish the exposition first," he said. "After all, whether I agree with you or not is a small matter. Maud Brereton asked your advice, not mine." Something in his tone startled her for a moment, and instinctively that afternoon walk they had taken down by the river a fortnight ago came into her mind; but she went on without a pause. "I seem cold-blooded to you," she said; "and I dare say I am--it is highly probable, in fact. Then, there is a further thing to be considered: many girls, I feel sure, have their passion awakened by marriage. Now, that constitutes a great danger, I admit, in passionless marriages. Who can tell--well, that need not be discussed. But it remains certain, I am afraid, that there are many women to whom the becoming as one flesh with their husbands has not meant anything before they married them." "And less afterwards," remarked Jim. "And less afterwards. Their physical nature is awakened, and-- But, and here I am less modern than you at present are inclined to give me credit for." "Credit for?" asked Jim.