Page:Francis Crawford - Mr Isaacs.djvu/80

 the papal infallibility affects my opinion of Mohammedan marriages."

"And what do you think of them?" she inquired, resuming her work and applying herself thereto with great attention.

"I think that, though justified in principle by the ordinary circumstances of Eastern life, there are cases in which the system acts very badly. I think that young men are often led by sheer force of example into marrying several wives before they have sufficiently reflected on the importance of what they are doing. I think that both marriage and divorce are too easily managed in consideration of their importance to a man's life, and I am convinced that no civilised man of Western education, if he were to adopt Islam, would take advantage of his change of faith to marry four wives. It is a case of theory versus practice, which I will not attempt to explain. It may often be good in logic, but it seems to me it is very often bad in real life."

"Yes," said Isaacs; "there are cases" He stopped, and Miss Westonhaugh, who had been very busy over her work, looked quietly up, only to find that he was profoundly interested in the horses cropping the short grass, as far as the saice would let them stretch their necks, on the other side of the lawn.

"I confess," said Miss Westonhaugh, "that my ideas about Mohammedans are chiefly the result of reading the Arabian Nights, ever so long ago. It seems to me