Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/71

 poor devil who has been there if slavery is not preferable. Besides that, marriage breeds deceit in any man who is a man. A bachelor may and does do as he pleases and don’t give a rap who knows it; but a married man must perpetually  dissemble if he would keep the peace. It is a known fact that our greatest minds have been those untrammeled by  domestic cares.”

“Have you ever been married yourself?” I asked, abruptly.

“No, thank God, nor never intend to be; though I have spliced at least a great gross of idiots in my time.”

“Which gives you no claim to an intimate knowledge of the conjugal relation, however.”

“Bah! The French manage things after my notion. There you have an enlightened race upon whom the sanctity of the marriage relation rests with feathery lightness. Don’t trust the woman unless you want to have your heart turned inside out, and your faith in human nature destroyed. Hasn’t such been your experience, Mr. Wylde?”

“Unfortunately it has, and probably you know it,” I answered, “but, for all that, I am not shallow enough to  fancy that because I have been unfortunate, there are no  true women in the world.”

“I know nothing about your private affairs,” he replied, hastily. “Pardon me if I have probed an unhealed wound.”

“I assure you, George, that he don’t,” Maurice hastened to say. “I never told him a solitary thing.”

“I don’t care whether he knows or not,” I said, for I felt in just that mood. “Look here, Doctor, my wife made life a hell while she lived with me, and wound up by running off with another man.”

“Indeed!”

“It is true. I”

He raised his hand and gave one of his disagreeable laughs.

“Pray spare me the details, Wylde. I have no doubt you were as much to blame as she was. Now with an easy divorce law, all this might have been avoided. As it is, your life is broken, your happiness destroyed, or at least you think so, for I have not the least doubt you will be idiot enough to try it again.”

“Thank you for the compliment—no. I’ve had enough