cried the girl earnestly. "You could carry me off my feet, I dare say,
soul and body, but it may be bitter bad business for all that.
These things done in that romantic rush, like Mr. Smith's, they--
they do attract women, I don't deny it. As you say, we're all
telling the truth to-night. They've attracted poor Mary, for one.
They attract me, Michael. But the cold fact remains:
imprudent marriages do lead to long unhappiness and disappointment--
you've got used to your drinks and things--I shan't be
pretty much longer--"

"Imprudent marriages!" roared Michael. "And pray where in earth
or heaven are there any prudent marriages? Might as well talk
about prudent suicides. You and I have dawdled round each other
long enough, and are we any safer than Smith and Mary Gray,
who met last night? You never know a husband till you marry him.
Unhappy! of course you'll be unhappy. Who the devil are you
that you shouldn't be unhappy, like the mother that bore you?
Disappointed! of course we'll be disappointed. I, for one,
don't expect till I die to be so good a man as I am at this minute--
a tower with all the trumpets shouting."

"You see all this," said Rosamund, with a grand sincerity in her solid face,
"and do you really want to marry me?"

"My darling, what else is there to do?" reasoned the Irishman. "What other
occupation is there for an active man on this earth, except to
marry you? What's the alternative to marriage, barring sleep?
It's not liberty, Rosamund. Unless you marry God, as our nuns do in Ireland,
you must marry Man--that is Me. The only third thing is to marry yourself--
yourself, yourself, yourself--the only companion that is never satisfied--