“Had a traveller been concealed on that country road he would have been puzzled to see a young man and woman sitting in a carriage, and apparently quarrelling at one moment, but at the next locked in each other’s arms and smothering each other with kisses.” [Illustration] CHAPTER X. Mr. Lister paused a moment in the narration of a story to which I had listened with absorbing interest, and then said: “Ah me, that was eight years ago.” “Eight years ago?” I exclaimed, “what a long courtship!” “It did not seem long to us. We had both discovered from much observation of our married friends that courtship was the true elysium in every one’s life, and a far happier state than marriage. Noting this we asked each other why we should not prolong this happy season. In it we realised that each was to the other a delightful and never-ending mystery. We saw that in courtship we had a feeling of deep reverence for each other which was almost wholly wanting among married people. In courtship we each felt that love was generous condescension in the other. I did not feel that I was at all worthy of her, and she did not feel that she was worthy of me. We were inexpressibly sacred objects in each other’s eyes, and above all things we desired to remain so. “Besides, to tell the truth, we saw some terribly dark spots in marriage from which we shrank as from the contemplation of the slimy things in a pool. It seemed ‘filled with the habitations of cruelty!’ She confided to me that she had a schoolmate, a dear friend, who had been married a few years before. She was a radiant, fragrant being, fitted by every gift of Nature to shed light and perfume, joy and laughter wherever she went. But alas, she was not physically adapted to the fearful treadmill of enforced maternity. After twice becoming a mother and barely escaping the ordeal with her life, she was warned that another risk of that kind would undoubtedly have a fatal termination. And this innocent, helpless being, with a sword hanging over her bright young life, went on her way scattering gentle words and loving deeds along her blackly shadowed path. But O, the pity of it! the sword fell. Within a year she was a martyr to the fearful Moloch which yawns continually over woman’s life. She escaped by death from a life so fraught with cruel suffering, so filled with unutterable indignities, that the wonder is that woman did not strike long ago! “In the ecstasy of our love Allegra Alliston and I vowed that we would never take part in a system that permitted such unspeakable cruelty. We chose rather to enjoy the quiet pleasures of courtship and be satisfied with them.” “And yet,” said I, “you had decided to get married. You said that Miss Alliston was preparing her wedding-dress at the time of the commencement of the Strike.”