“That’s what I mean by saying that books unfit women to marry wisely,” interjected Mrs. Blodgett. “They marry foreigners because they are more cultivated, without a thought of character.” “Indeed, Mrs. Blodgett,” you observed, “has not the day gone by for thinking dullness a sign of honesty? And certainly a business career is far more likely to corrupt and harden men’s natures than the higher professions, for its temptations and strifes are so much greater.” Your opinion was so in accord with what my father had often preached that I could not but wonder if his teachings still colored your thoughts. To test this idea as well as to learn your present view, I recurred to another theory of his by saying, “Does not the broader and more sensitive nature of the scholar or artist involve defects fully as serious as the hardness and narrowness of the business man? Some one has said that ‘to marry a literary man is to domesticate a bundle of nerves.’” “A nervous irritability,” you replied, “which came from fine mental exertion, would be as nothing compared to my own fretting over enforced companionship with an unsympathetic or sordid nature.” Then you laughed, and added, “I must have a very bad temper, for it is the only one which ever really annoys me.” That last speech told me how thoroughly the woman of twenty-three was a development of the child of fourteen, for I remembered how little my mother’s anger used to disturb you, but how deeply and strongly your emotions affected you. I suppose it was absurd, but I felt happy to think that you had changed so little in character from the time when I knew you so well. And from that evening I never for an instant believed that you would marry Mr. Whitely, for I was sure that you could never love him. How could I dream that you, with beauty, social position, and wealth, would make a loveless marriage? Good-night, my love. XI