“But that’s what I don’t see—” “You don’t see it because you don’t know Stephen—that is, you don’t know him well.” “But from what I do know of him—” “He seems very nice. Yes, of course! But, good Heavens! Elsie, I want a husband who’s something more than very nice!” “And yet that’s pretty good, as husbands go.” “If I can’t reach a higher standard than as husbands go I sha’n’t marry any one.” “Which seems to me what’s very likely to happen.” “So it seems to me.” The silence that followed was full of soft, swishing sounds, which I judged to come from the taking off of a dress and the putting on of some sort of negligée. From my experience of the habits of girls, as illustrated by my sisters and their friends, I supposed that they were lending each other services in the processes of undoing. The girl with the mezzo voice had gone up to Elsie’s room to undo her; Elsie had come down to render similar assistance. There is probably a psychological connection between this intimate act and confidence, since girls most truly bare their hearts to each other when they ought to be going to bed. The mezzo young lady was moving about the room when the conversation was taken up again. “I don’t understand,” Elsie complained, “why you should have got engaged to Stephen in the first place.” “I don’t, either”—she was quite near me now, and threw something that might have been a brooch or a chain on the little white desk—“except on the ground that I wanted to try him.” “Try him? What do you mean?” “Well, what’s an engagement? Isn’t it a kind of experiment? You get as near to marriage as you can, while still keeping free to draw back. To me it’s been like going down to the edge of the water in which you can commit suicide, and finding it so cold that you go home again.” “Don’t you ever mean to be married at all?” Elsie demanded, impatiently. “I don’t mean to be married till I’m sure.” Elsie burst out indignantly: “Regina Barry, that’s the most pusillanimous thing I ever heard. You might as well say you’d never cross the Atlantic unless you were sure the ship would reach the other side.” “My trouble about crossing the Atlantic is in making up my mind whether or not I want to go on board. One might be willing to risk the second step, but one can’t risk the first. Even the hymn that says ‘One step enough for me’ implies that at least you know what that’s to be.” “You mean that you balk at marriage in any case.” “I mean that I balk at marriage with any of the men I’ve been engaged to. I must say that; and I can’t say more.”