"Is it life?" said Derwentwater, who was somewhat contemptuous of fiction. "At least it is England," said Bice. "The girls who will not make a good marriage because of some one else, or because it is their parents who arrange it. That is how Lady Randolph speaks. She says that nothing is right but to fall--how do you call it?--in love?--It is not _comme il faut_ even to talk of that." Derwentwater blushed like a girl. He was more inexperienced in many ways than Bice. "And do you regard it in another point of view?" he said. Bice laughed out with frank disdain. "Certainly, I regard it different--oh, quite different. That is not what happens in life." "And do you consider life is chiefly occupied with getting married?" he continued, feeling, along with a good deal of quite unnecessary excitement, a great desire to know what was her way of looking at this great subject. Visions had been flashing recently through his mind, which pointed a little this way too. "Altogether," said Bice, with great gravity, "how can you begin to live till you have settled that? Till then you do not know what is going to happen to you. When you get up in the morning you know not what may come before the night; when you walk out you know not who may be the next person you meet; perhaps your husband. But then you marry, and that is all settled; henceforward nothing can happen!" said Bice, throwing out her hands. "Then, after all is settled, you can begin to live." "This is very interesting," said Derwentwater, "I am so glad to get at a real and individual view. But this, perhaps, only applies to--ladies? It is, perhaps, not the same with men?" Bice gave him a careless, half-contemptuous glance. "I have never known anything," she said, "about men."