"I don't know," answered his brother, "but I know that your question makes an end of our living together. I will not remain with you any more." "I did not seriously mean that we should try our strength on one another." "But it came into your mind, since you said it." He departed, and their tie of brotherhood was at an end. The narrator adds, "The bond of their friendship was so fragile, that it could not bear the touch of an over-hasty thought." Marriage is a blood-bond and more--it is a sacred transaction. It is so tender and so fragile, that a hasty word--a joke, as one calls it--can make an end of it for the whole of life. It is no use afterwards to say, "It was only a jest." We have the answer of the mediæval Norse poet Tormod, "It came into your mind." "Long years must pay for the wrong of a second." And then, "Which of us two do you think would prove the master?" As soon as a married pair conceive their relation as a struggle for power, while it is just the contrary, hell comes into the house. The woman has an inclination to rule. But if, in her defence, I say that this inclination is her way of reacting against the suppressing, not oppressive, man (for such a one I have never seen), I hope I shall not have to repent it. "If we ventured on a conflict!" Yes, then it is as if one drew a weapon on oneself, or as if a kingdom were divided. Every blow which one deals, strikes one's own heart. Cicero says that friendship is only possible between friendly equals. Swedenborg says that marriage is impossible between godless people. I am convinced of it; for without contact with God, who is the Fountain-head of love, no stream of illumination can flow from the Eternal. I have described the marriage of godless people. I have suffered for doing so, but I do not regret it, and do not recall a word. It is as I said. The devout do not describe their marriages, and they write neither dramas nor romances; literary history which mostly deals with irreligious books, should take notice of that. =The Power of Love.=--In France there lives a marquis who is an occultist. Endowed by nature with a sensitive type of soul, refined by education, protected by wealth against the brutality of life, purified by suffering and renunciation, he entered into contact with the higher forms of existence, which the theosophists call "the astral plane." His sensitiveness was elaborated to such a pitch, that he became a medium, and could enter into touch with friends at a distance. Then he met a woman belonging to the same spiritual sphere, a transparent airy figure, whose steps were inaudible, whose words were rather to be apprehended than heard.