all the color off your illusions and all the finish off your conversation."

"And the hinges of your love making and your pretty speeches are likely to creak every time you open your mouth," affixed the bachelor, gloomily.

"And you are bound to be old-fashioned,"[137] concluded the widow, with conviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands with all the modern improvements. Besides," she continued, thoughtfully, "even if you should be lucky enough to find another—another—"

[137]

"Tenant for your heart?" suggested the bachelor, helpfully.

The widow nodded.

"There would be the agony," she went on, "of getting used to him or her."

"And the torture," added the bachelor, with a faint shudder, "of going through with the wedding ceremony again and of walking up a green and yellow church aisle with a green and yellow feeling and a stiff new coat, and the gaping multitude gazing at you as if you were a new[138] specimen of crocodile or a curio or——"

[138]

"It takes nearly all of one lifetime," interrupted the widow, impatiently, "to get used to one wife or husband; but, according to the 'trial marriage' idea, just as you had gotten somebody nicely trained into all your little ways and discovered how to manage him——"

"And to bluff him," interpolated the bachelor.

"And what to have for dinner when you were going to show him the bill for a new hat," proceeded the widow, "and how to keep him at home nights——"

"And to separate him from his money," remarked the bachelor, sarcastically.

"And to make him see things your[139] way," concluded the widow, "it would be time to pack up your trunks and leave. Any two people," she continued, meditatively, "can live together fairly comfortably after they have discovered the path around one another's nerves—the little things not to say and not to do in order to avoid friction, and the little things to say and to do that will oil the matrimonial wheels. But it would take all the 'trial' period to get the domestic machine running, and then——"

[139]

"You'd be running after another soul-mate," finished the bachelor, sympathetically.

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