“No, indeed!  You were right, because you really expected perfection of him.  You expected the ideal.  And that’s what makes all the trouble, in married life:  we expect too much of each other—­we each expect more of the other than we are willing to give or can give.  If I had to begin over again, I should not expect anything at all, and then I should be sure of being radiantly happy.  But all this talking and all this writing about love seems to turn our brains; we know that men are not perfect, even at our craziest, because women are not, but we expect perfection of them; and they seem to expect it of us, poor things!  If we could keep on after we are in love just as we were before we were in love, and take nice things as favors and surprises, as we did in the beginning!  But we get more and more greedy and exacting—­”

“Do you think I was too exacting in wanting him to tell me everything after we were engaged?”

“No, I don’t say that.  But suppose he had put it off till you were married?” Agatha blushed a little, but not painfully, “Would it have been so bad?  Then you might have thought that his flirting up to the last moment in his desperation was a very good joke.  You would have understood better just how it was, and it might even have made you fonder of him.  You might have seen that he had flirted with some one else because he was so heart-broken about you.”

“Then you believe that if I could have waited till—­till—­but when I had found out, don’t you see I couldn’t wait?  It would have been all very well if I hadn’t known it till then.  But as I did know it.  Don’t you see?”

“Yes, that certainly complicated it,” Mrs. March admitted.  “But I don’t think, if he’d been a false nature, he’d have owned up as he did.  You see, he didn’t try to deny it; and that’s a great point gained.”

“Yes, that is true,” said Agatha, with conviction.  “I saw that afterwards.  But you don’t think, Mrs. March, that I was unjust or—­or hasty?”

“No, indeed!  You couldn’t have done differently under the circumstances.  You may be sure he felt that—­he is so unselfish and generous—­” Agatha began to weep into her handkerchief again; Mrs. March caressed her hand.  “And it will certainly come right if you feel as you do.”

“No,” the girl protested.  “He can never forgive me; it’s all over, everything is over.  It would make very little difference to me, what happened now—­if the steamer broke her shaft, or anything.  But if I can only believe I wasn’t unjust—­”

Mrs. March assured her once more that she had behaved with absolute impartiality; and she proved to her by a process of reasoning quite irrefragable that it was only a question of time, with which place had nothing to do, when she and Burnamy should come together again, and all should be made right between them.  The fact that she did not know where he was, any more than Mrs. March herself, had nothing to do with the result; that was a mere detail, which would settle itself.  She clinched her argument by confessing that her own engagement had been broken off, and that it had simply renewed itself.  All you had to do was to keep willing it, and waiting.  There was something very mysterious in it.