with money when you've got it as it is to know[67] what to do without it when you haven't got it; and a million dollars between husband and wife is a bigger gulf than a $10 a week salary. It's not a question of the amount of money, but the question of who shall spend it that makes all the trouble."

[67]

"But don't you see," argued the bachelor, sitting up suddenly and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "that all that would be eliminated if people would make marriage a business proposition? For instance, if two people would discuss the situation rationally and make the terms before marriage; if the man would state the services he requires and the woman would demand the compensation she thinks she deserves——"

"Ugh!" shuddered the widow, putting her hands over her eyes,[68] "that would be like writing your epitaph and choosing the style of your coffin."

[68]

"And every man," pursued the bachelor, "would be willing to give his wife her board and room and a salary adequate to her services and to his income——"

"And to let her eat with the family," jeered the widow.

"Well," finished the bachelor, "then marriage wouldn't offer the poorest returns in the professional market. And, besides," he added, "there would be fewer wives sitting about in apartment hotels holding their hands and ordering the bellboys around, while their husbands are down town fretting and struggling themselves into bankruptcy; and fewer husbands spending their nights[69] and their money out with the boys, while their wives are bending over the cook stove and the sewing machine, trying to make ends meet on nothing a year."

[69]

"But that," cried the widow, taking her hands down from her eyes, "would mean spending your courtship talking stocks and bonds and dividends!"

"And the rest of your life forgetting them and talking love," declared the bachelor, triumphantly.

The widow looked up speculatively.

"Well—perhaps," she acquiesced, "if courtship were more of a business proposition marriage would be less of a failure. Anyhow, you'd know in advance just what a man[70] considered you worth in dollars and cents."

[70]

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