`Ten, twelve years hence--' he
would muse more hopefully. `But by that time,' I would say, `you'll
probably be married, and your wife mightn't quite--', whereat he would
hotly repeat what he had said many times: that he would never marry.
Marriage was an anti-social anachronism. I think its survival wasin
some part due to the machinations of Capital. Anyway, it was doomed.
Temporary civil contracts between men and women would be the rule
`ten, twelve years hence'; pending which time the lot of any man who
had civic sense must be celibacy, tempered perhaps with free love.
Long before that time was up, nevertheless, William married. One
afternoon in the spring of '95 I happened to meet him at a corner of
Cockspur Street. I wondered at the immense cordiality of his greeting;
for our friendship, such as it was, had waned in our two final years
at Oxford. `You look very flourishing, and,' I said, `you're wearing a
new suit!' `I'm married,' he replied, obviously without a twinge of
conscience. He told me he had been married just a month. He declared
that to be married was the most splendid thing in all the world; but
he weakened the force of this generalisation by adding that there
never was any one like his wife. `You must see her,' he said; and his
impatience to show her proudly off to some one was so evident, and so
touching, that I could but accept his invitation to go and stay with
them for two or three days--`why not next week?' They had taken and
furnished `a sort of cottage' in --shire, and this was their home.
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