getting morbid? What is the error? What is your error?"

"You know," he said, with a gentle refusal of my willingness to make
light of his trouble. "It is surely an error to allow a woman to give
her word when she can promise nothing more, and to let her hold herself
to it."

I could have told him that I did not think the error in this case was
altogether or mainly his, or the persistence in it; for it had seemed to
me from the beginning that the love between him and Miss Bentley was
fully as much her affair as his, and that quite within the bounds of
maidenly modesty she showed herself as passionately true to their
plighted troth. But of course this would not do, and I had to be content
with the ironical suggestion that he might try offering to release Miss
Bentley.

"Don't laugh at me," he implored, and I confess his tone would have
taken from me any heart to do so.

"My dear fellow," I said, "I see your point. But don't you think you are
quite needlessly adding to your affliction by pressing it? You two are
in the position which isn't at all uncommon with engaged people, of
having to wait upon exterior circumstances before you get married.
Suppose you were prevented by poverty, as often happens? It would be a
hardship as it is now; but in that case would your engagement be any
less an error than it is now? I don't think it would, and I don't
believe you think so either."

"In that case we should not be opposing our wills to the will of some
one else, who has a better claim to her daughter's allegiance than I