"Why, get married! I’m going to marry Charlotte Beecher." "But I thought that Charlotte—" "Yes, she’s very fond of Robert Lloyd. And I’m only her second string. But bless your wayward curls, we’re all second strings on somebody’s violin! What’s the odds—especially after the first string has snapped? I’ve been madly in love myself, twice before. Once, down south in Colon, with a dusky Isthmian beauty. The second time, with you." "Don’t be silly, Mark, or I shall stop envying Charlotte her extraordinary good luck." "Hers _and_ mine! Charlotte was looking for a husband with enough brains to manage a fortune, and yet with heart enough not to love her for her fortune alone. I was looking for a wife with heart enough to lay her fortune at my feet, and yet with enough brains to permit me to enjoy her society. Are we well matched or not?" "’Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,’" quoted Janet, laughing. "Now you’re talking sense as well as poetry, dear girl." "I didn’t say I’d follow your example, though." "All in good time! It’s human nature for young blood to rebel against wedlock—and to come around to it in the long run. Marriage, as Lydia Dyson says, is the easiest way!" "Yes, for Lydia, who changes her lover once a season, while her husband stays at home and keeps the household in smooth running order. But my needs don’t run in Lydia’s line." Pryor admitted this. But he pointed out that marriage was a human institution. There it was, for every one of us to reckon with. Either you made use of it, or it made use of you. Sensible people adopted the former alternative. "Why, look at me!" he said, waxing strangely eloquent. "I’ve knocked about the world a good bit in the last twenty years. A born adventurer if ever there was one. Do you see me settling down to matrimony like any spirit-broken married man in the pinchbeck salaried class? No, by Jupiter! I’ve waited for the right conditions to come to pass so that I could take up marriage as one more great adventure." "Your last one, Mark!" said Janet, bantering him. More seriously, she asked him whether all his other adventures had been in the Secret Service. "Lord no! I’ve taken a shot at all sorts of jobs and been all sorts of things from a West Point cadet to a buccaneer in the South Seas." This quiet, self-contained man, spare of frame but tough as a hickory stick, had he really been a gorgeous sea-rover? Looking into his humorously inquisitive gray eyes, Janet could not doubt his words. And, like Desdemona entranced by Othello, she listened whilst he dipped into a store of reminiscences and, in his own inimitably laconic style, gave her an outline of his picturesque career.