and whom you have already taught to think you better than you
are. You may think you had a conscience, and believed in God;
but what is a conscience to a wife? Wise men of yore erected
statues of their deities, and consciously performed their part
in life before those marble eyes. A god watched them at the
board, and stood by their bedside in the morning when they
woke; and all about their ancient cities, where they bought
and sold, or where they piped and wrestled, there would stand
some symbol of the things that are outside of man. These were
lessons, delivered in the quiet dialect of art, which told
their story faithfully, but gently. It is the same lesson, if
you will - but how harrowingly taught! - when the woman you
respect shall weep from your unkindness or blush with shame at
your misconduct. Poor girls in Italy turn their painted
Madonnas to the wall: you cannot set aside your wife. To
marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are
married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but
to be good.

And goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than
mere single virtue; for in marriage there are two ideals to be
realised. A girl, it is true, has always lived in a glass
house among reproving relatives, whose word was law; she has
been bred up to sacrifice her judgments and take the key
submissively from dear papa; and it is wonderful how swiftly
she can change her tune into the husband's. Her morality has
been, too often, an affair of precept and conformity. But in
the case of a bachelor who has enjoyed some measure both of
privacy and freedom, his moral judgments have been passed in
some accordance with his nature. His sins were always sins in