country of unadorned facts over which I propose to hunt the wily fox,
matrimony. I have never hunted a fox, but I can quite well imagine what
it is like.

"In the first place, it is all very well to suppose that it had pleased
Allah in his goodness to relieve me of my three incumbrances--meanwhile,
there they are, and they are very real difficulties I assure you.
Nevertheless are there means provided us by the foresight of the
apostle, by which we may ease ourselves of domestic burdens when they
are too heavy for us to bear. It would be quite within the bounds of
possibility for me to divorce them all three, without making any special
scandal. But if I did this thing, do you not think that my experience of
married life has given me the most ineradicable prejudices against women
as daily companions? Am I not persuaded that they all bicker and chatter
and nibble sweetmeats alike--absolutely alike? Or if I looked abroad--"

"Stop," I said, "I am not reasoner enough to persuade you that all women
have souls. Very likely in Persia and India they have not. I only want
you to believe that there may be women so fortunate as to possess a
modicum of immortality. Well, pardon my interruption, 'if you looked
abroad,' as you were saying?--"

"If I looked abroad, I should probably discover little petty traits of
the same class, if not exactly identical. I know little of Englishmen,
and might be the more readily deceived. Supposing, if you will, that,
after freeing myself from all my present ties, in order to start afresh,
I were to find myself attracted by some English girl here"--there must
have been something wrong with the mouthpiece of his pipe, for he
examined it very attentively-- "attracted," he continued, "by some one,
for instance, by Miss Westonhaugh--" he stopped short.