He was deeply touched and rested there comforted by her fond affection. "Let me see her now and then in peace without subterfuge, so that I may help her with her education--and then in the autumn I think I will take that chance of being sent to Teheran--Seraphim, do you remember the afternoon she typed the charity things, when I came up to tea with you, you said I was depressed, and I said it was the shadow of coming events? Well, how true it has proved--that is the first time I ever noticed her, and once before you had remarked that you feared I should one day be profoundly in love." Lady Garribardine stooped and kissed his forehead. "Alas!" she said. "But you were too fine, dear G., to go on drifting forever from the Alice Southerwoods to the Läos; it was bound to come with your temperament. I really wish you could marry this girl and have some splendid little sons for me to adopt and leave some of my money to." "I would ask nothing better of Fate," and his eyes became suffused with light at the thought. His aunt sat down again and began peeling an apple. "You would have no objection to that despised domestic relationship, then--it would not even appear bourgeois, eh?" "Not in the least." "G.,--how the whole world is full of shams. This ridiculous thing called marriage! What a problem, and no light on the subject! A suitable marriage is perfect happiness, the obligations are joys and pleasures, and it does not seem to be allowed to occur more than once in a hundred years. All the rest are in gradations of unsuitableness and fret and boredom. It makes me shudder now when I see people standing at the altar, swearing to love forever--nine-tenths of them not even taking in the meaning of the vows they are making--and a large percentage going through them for some ultimate end entirely disconnected with love or desire for the partner they are being bound to--it is tragic." Mr. Strobridge agreed. "I am convinced," Her Ladyship went on, now warmed to her subject, "that much unhappiness would be avoided if no vows were made at all, but the parson merely joined the hands and said a prayer over them to ask that they might go on desiring each other, and that ended the business. I believe truly that the actual breaking of the vow acts in some mysterious occult fashion and draws penalties of misery upon the breakers." "What a disturbing thought!" "Yes--because it is not really the infidelities which can be sins, they are merely human nature--it is the breaking of the given word which draws the current of disaster." "I expect you are quite right--the whole thing is infernal--and yet we must have some sort of union recognised by the state or chaos would ensue."