“The Spartans were right in destroying the feeble children.  Since I am under such obligations, I cannot resist your logic, and I admit that it would be poor taste on my part to ask you to support for me a wife not of your choosing.”

“‘Good taste’ at least should have prevented such a remark.  You can choose for yourself from a score of fine girls of your own station in rank and wealth.”

“Pardon me, but I would rather not inflict my weakness on any of the score.”

“But you would inflict it on one weak in social position and without any means of support.”

“She is the one girl that I have met with who seemed both gentle and strong, and whose tastes harmonize with my own.  But you don’t know her, and never will.  You have only learned external facts about the Jocelyns, and out of your prejudices have created a family of underbred people that does not exist.  Their crime of comparative poverty I cannot dispute.  I have not made the prudential inquiries which you and father have gone into so carefully.  But your logic is inexorable.  As you suggest, I could not earn enough myself to provide a wife with hairpins.  The slight considerations of happiness, and the fact that Miss Jocelyn might aid me in becoming something more than a shadow among men, are not to be urged against the solid reasons you have named.”

“Young people always give a tragic aspect to these crude passing fancies.  I have known ‘blighted happiness’ to bud and blossom again so often that you must pardon me if I act rather on the ground of experience and good sense.  An unsuitable alliance may bring brief gratification and pleasure, but never happiness, never lasting and solid content.”

“Well, mother, I am not strong enough to argue with you, either in the abstract or as to these ‘wise saws’ which so mangle my wretched self,” and with the air of one exhausted and defeated he languidly went to his room.

Mrs. Arnold frowned as she muttered, “He makes no promise to cease visiting the girl.”  After a moment she added, even more bitterly, “I doubt whether he could keep such a promise; therefore my will must supply his lack of decision;” and she certainly appeared capable of making good this deficiency in several human atoms.

If she could have imparted some of her firmness and resolution to Martin Jocelyn, they would have been among the most useful gifts a man ever received.  As the stanchness of a ship is tested by the storm, so a crisis in his experience was approaching which would test his courage, his fortitude, and the general soundness of his manhood.  Alas! the test would find him wanting.  That night, for the first time in his life, he came home with a step a trifle unsteady.  Innocent Mrs. Jocelyn did not note that anything was amiss.  She was busy putting her home into its usual pretty order after the breezy, gusty evening always occasioned by one of Belle’s informal companies.  She observed that her husband had recovered more than his wonted cheerfulness, and seemed indeed as gay as Belle herself.  Lounging on a sofa, he laughed at his wife and petted her more than usual, assuring her that her step was as light, and that she still looked as young and pretty as any of the girls who had tripped through the parlors that evening.