put such a notion upon Hawthorne. If you can't be more cheerful about
it, Basil, I wish you wouldn't talk of the affair at all."

"Oh, I'm quite willing to be cheerful about it, my dear," I returned;
"and, if you like, we will fancy Mrs. Bentley coming round and ardently
wishing their marriage, and their gayly protesting that after having
given the matter a great deal of thought they had decided it would be
better not to marry, but to live on separately for their own sake, just
as they have been doing for hers so long. Wouldn't that be cheerful?"

Mrs. March said that if I wished to tease it was because I had no ideas
on the subject, and she would advise me to drop it. I did so, for the
better part of the evening, but I could not relinquish it altogether.
"Do you think," I asked, finally, "that any sort of character will stand
the test of such a prolonged engagement?"

"Why not? Very indifferent characters stand the test of marriage, and
that's indefinitely prolonged."

"Yes, but it's not indefinite itself. Marriage is something very
distinct and permanent; but such an engagement as this has no sort of
future. It is a mere motionless present, without the inspiration of a
common life, and with no hope of release from durance except through a
chance that it will be sorrow instead of joy. I should think they would
go to pieces under the strain."

"But as you see they don't, perhaps the strain isn't so great after
all."

"Ah," I confessed, "there is that wonderful adaptation of the human soul