"It is melancholy enough," Fenton observed, regarding it closely. "How melancholy every thing is now-a-days?"
"To a man about to be married?" she asked, with a fine smile.
"Oh, always to me. The fact that I am going to be married does not prevent my still being myself."
"Unfortunately not," she returned, with a faint suspicion of sarcasm in her tone. "You pique yourself upon being somber."
"I dare say," answered he, a trifle petulantly. "Pain has become a habit with me; discontent is about the only luxury I can afford, heaven knows!"
"Oh, that," Fenton said, putting his hand to the blue and gold tie at his throat. "I'm trying to furbish up my old body and decrepit heart against my nuptials, so I invested fifty cents in this tie."
"You couldn't have done it cheaper," remarked she; "though, perhaps," she added dryly, "it is all the rejuvenation is worth."
Fenton smiled grimly and again applied himself to the examination of the drawings, while the other looked out at the rain.
"Boston has more climate, and that far worse," she remarked, "than any other known locality."
"Does that mean that you are going to Herman's this afternoon?" asked Fenton.
"I should have gone this morning if you had not insisted upon my wasting my time simply because you had determined to waste yours."
"You are frank to a guest," he said. "I wished to be congratulated on my marriage."
"I shall not congratulate you," she answered. "You are spoiled. The women have petted you too much."
"According to the old fairy tale all goes well with the man of whom the women are fond."
"I remember," she said. "I always pitied their wives."
"You are too good-natured not to, I suppose; especially when you look forward to your marriage with such rapture."
"But, Helen, have I ever pretended to believe in marriage? Marriage is a crime! Think of the wretched folly of those who talk of the holiness of love's being protected by the sanctities of marriage. If love is holy, let it have way; if it is not, all the sacraments priests can devise cannot sanctify it."
"Because marriage is a necessary evil as society is at present constituted."
"But," Helen said slowly, "you who pretend to have so little regard for society--"
"Ah, there it is," he interrupted. "Man is gregarious by instinct; he must do as his fellows do. He must submit to the most absurd _convenances_ of his fellowmen, as one sheep jumps where another did though the bar be taken away. If he were strong enough to stand alone he might take conventions by the throat and be a god!"