“Follies, I should call them. Yes, I like her, if only because she has taught me that a person may be foolish and yet be wise; decorate herself like a cocotte and yet be a lady; violate half the rules one has been brought up on and yet be more estimable than the wholly virtuous—Cousin Miranda, for instance.” “Those would be dangerous deductions for some girls, but you have a ripping strong head. You ought to be as grateful for that as for your beauty.” “I wish you’d stop preaching.” “I never preached in my life,” he said, indignantly. “I was merely thinking aloud—uttering an obvious fact. I might add that I wish your temper was in the same class with your good looks and common-sense.” “Well, it isn’t. Do you approve of second marriages?” “Never given a thought to the subject. If ever I married it would not be with the divorce court among the future possibilities.” “I was not thinking of divorce—although Mrs. Rothe, in a way, suggested the question. But I wonder how it feels to be married to a second man, especially if you were in love with the first—and most youthful marriages are for love. I picked up an old volume of Hawthorne the other day and came across the phrase, apropos of a second marriage, ‘the dislocation of the heart’s principles.’ You never forget a phrase like that. And I have been wondering.” “One is so different at twenty-five and thirty-five. It is almost like being reborn. And so many youthful marriages result in disillusion and disappointment you can hardly blame the victims for taking another try at it. There is such a thing as sacrificing too much, and I fancy Mrs. Rothe has. Still, there is something magnificent in the big gambler, and Mrs. Rothe must have more courage than weakness to stake all on one throw.” “I don’t know that I blame her if she never was happy before; but sometimes first love is real love—I mean, of course, when it is; mere fancies don’t count. But if one has any brain and a moderate amount of experience, one must know when one has been through the real thing. I am thinking now of two people who have been married long enough to find out. It is, no doubt, a matter for speculation before that; and that is the reason so many girls marry and are happy, even though they have broken their hearts several times—you see, women live the life of the imagination until they can live in fact. But when one has actually lived for some years with a man and loved him and he dies—that is what I mean. Don’t you think it is the second-rate person who marries again? I have a theory, in spite of Hawthorne, that mistaken marriages don’t count—I mean so far as the soul, the inner life, is concerned,—but that the real one counts forever, and that consolement with another partner presupposes shallowness and a lack of true spirituality. Fancy being equally happy and in deepest accord with two men. It is disgusting.”