“I assure you,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that I am very serious.  To prove it, I will make you a proposal.  Should you like me, as they say here, to marry you?”

“To hunt up a wife for me?”

“She is already found.  I will bring you together.”

“Oh, come,” said Tristram, “we don’t keep a matrimonial bureau.  He will think you want your commission.”

“Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,” said Newman, “and I will marry her tomorrow.”

“You have a strange tone about it, and I don’t quite understand you.  I didn’t suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating.”

Newman was silent a while.  “Well,” he said, at last, “I want a great woman.  I stick to that.  That’s one thing I can treat myself to, and if it is to be had I mean to have it.  What else have I toiled and struggled for, all these years?  I have succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success?  To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument.  She must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good.  I can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal myself.  She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased.  I want to possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”

“Why didn’t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?” Tristram demanded.  “I have been trying so to make you fond of me!”

“This is very interesting,” said Mrs. Tristram.  “I like to see a man know his own mind.”

“I have known mine for a long time,” Newman went on.  “I made up my mind tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth having, here below.  It is the greatest victory over circumstances.  When I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in person.  It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if he can.  He doesn’t have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose; he needs only to be a man.  Then he needs only to use his will, and such wits as he has, and to try.”

“It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity.”

“Well, it is certain,” said Newman, “that if people notice my wife and admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.”

“After this,” cried Mrs. Tristram, “call any man modest!”

“But none of them will admire her so much as I.”

“I see you have a taste for splendor.”

Newman hesitated a little; and then, “I honestly believe I have!” he said.

“And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.”

“A good deal, according to opportunity.”

“And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?”

“No,” said Newman, half reluctantly, “I am bound to say in honesty that I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.”