only to discover that she was self-conscious or uninteresting
or engaged. Still I had assured myself that she was not the
one. I am very conscientious, and I consider that it is my
duty to go so far with every woman I meet as to be able to
learn whether she is or is not the one, and the sad result is
that I am like a man who follows the hounds but is never in at
the death."

"Well," some married woman would say, grimly, "I hope you will
get your deserts some day; and you WILL, too. Some day some
girl will make you suffer for this."

"Oh, that's all right," Carlton would answer, meekly. "Lots
of women have made me suffer, if that's what you think I need."

"Some day," the married woman would prophesy, "you will care
for a woman so much that you will have no eyes for any one
else. That's the way it is when one is married."

"Well, when that's the way it is with ME," Carlton would
reply, "I certainly hope to get married; but until it is, I
think it is safer for all concerned that I should not."

Then Carlton would go to the club and complain bitterly to one
of his friends.

"How unfair married women are!" he would say. "The idea of
thinking a man could have no eyes but for one woman! Suppose
I had never heard a note of music until I was twenty-five
years of age, and was then given my hearing. Do you suppose