"I don't know," he said, "that a bachelor like myself has any right to discuss marriage, except on general principles; but certainly, even without taking the religious view of it, one can see that the very objections brought against wedlock are reasons in its favor." "Yes," Edith returned, but she moved uneasily in her chair, and Helen divined that the subject was painful to her. "The difficulty is," she said, with an air of dismissing the whole subject, "that most people marry for the honeymoon and very few for the whole life." She fell to thinking in an absorbed mood which was not wholly free from irritation, how constantly this question of marriage met one at every turn, as if the whole fabric of life, social and ethical, depended entirely upon this institution. She sighed a little impatiently, looking into the fire with mournful eyes. She thought of the marriages with which her destiny had been most intimately connected, her own ill-starred mating, the union of Herman and Ninitta, that of Fenton and Edith. She had long ago settled in her own mind that wedlock was not only the mainstay of society, but that it was largely a concession to the weakness of her sex; and yet instinctively she protested; that revolt against being a woman which few of her sex have failed at one time or another to experience taking the form of a revolt against matrimony. "Indeed," she broke out, half humorously and half pathetically, "the most joyful promise for the Christians hereafter is that they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage." Mr. Candish looked a little shocked; but Edith said softly,-- "That is only possible when they become as the Sons of God." Helen spread out her hands in a deprecatory gesture. "Come, Edith," she said, "that isn't fair, to take the discussion into regions where I can't follow you." Edith smiled, but made no rejoinder in words. Turning to Mr. Candish she remarked, with an abrupt change of subject,-- "When may I tell Melissa Blake about the Knitting School?" "I see no reason," he answered, "why she shouldn't know at once. We shall be ready to begin operations in a month at most, and ought to know her decision." "Isn't it capital?" Edith explained, turning toward Helen. "The Knitting School is really to be started. Mrs. Bodewin Ranger guarantees the funds for a year, and we have contracts for work to be delivered in the fall that will keep from a dozen to twenty girls busy all summer; while the matron's salary will put Melissa Blake on her feet very nicely. It's such a relief to have some of those girls provided for." "That's the Melissa Blake, isn't it," Helen asked, "that Mr. Hubbard spoke of at dinner?" "Yes," answered Edith, "but it is impossible that he should be right." Helen replied only by that look of general sympathy which does duty as an answer when one has no possible interest in the subject under discussion, but Mr. Candish, who knew Melissa, shook his head with an air of conviction.