And, since we are tete-a-tete, let us have a chat.  You won’t be angry with me for writing with a pencil, dear.  You see I am very comfortably settled in my big by-by and I do not want to have any ink-stains.  The fire sparkles on the hearth, the street is silent; let us forget that George will not return till midnight, and turn back to the past.

I can not recall the first month of that dear past without laughing and weeping at one and the same time.

How foolish we were!  How sweet it was!  There is a method of teaching swimming which is not the least successful, I am told.  It consists in throwing the future swimmer into the water and praying God to help him.  I am assured that after the first lesson he keeps himself afloat.

Well, I think that we women are taught to be wives in very much the same fashion.

Happy or otherwise—­the point is open to discussion marriage is a hurricane—­something unheard-of and alarming.

In a single night, and without any transition, everything is transformed and changes color; the erst while-cravatted, freshly curled, carefully dressed gentleman makes his appearance in a dressing-gown.  That which was prohibited becomes permissible, the code is altered, and words acquire a meaning they never had before, et cetera, et cetera.

It is not that all this is so alarming, if taken the right way—­a woman with some courage in her heart and some flexibility in her mind supports the shock and does not die under it; but the firmest of us are amazed at it, and stand open-mouthed amid all these strange novelties, like a penniless gourmand in the shop of Potel and Chabot.

They dare not touch these delicacies surrounding them, though invited to taste.  It is not that the wish or the appetite is lacking to them, but all these fine fruits have been offered them so lately that they have still the somewhat acid charm of green apples or forbidden fruit.  They approach, but they hesitate to bite.

After all, why complain?  What would one have to remember if one had entered married life like an inn, if one had not trembled a little when knocking at the door?  And it is so pleasant to recall things, that one would sometimes like to deck the future in the garments of the past.

It was, I recollect, two days after the all-important one.  I had gone into his room, I no longer remember why—­for the pleasure of going in, I suppose, and thereby acting as a wife.  A strong desire is that which springs up in your brain after leaving church to look like an old married woman.  You put on caps with ribbons, you never lay aside your cashmere shawl, you talk of “my home”—­two sweet words—­and then you bite your lips to keep from breaking out into a laugh; and “my husband,” and “my maid,” and the first dinner you order, when you forget the soup.  All this is charming, and, however ill at ease you may feel at first in all these new clothes, you are quite eager to put them on.