"You mean the French diplomat who married the Yankee vaudeville artist in China?"
"Yes," answered Tutt. "You recall they met in Shanghai and took a flying trip to Mongolia, where they were married by a Belgian missionary. The court held that the marriage was invalid, as the French statutes require a native of that country marrying abroad to have the ceremony performed either before a French diplomatic official or 'according to the usages of the country in which the marriage is performed.'"
"Wasn't the Belgian missionary a diplomatic official?" asked Mr. Tutt.
"Evidently not sufficiently so," replied his partner. "Anyhow, in Mongolia there are only two methods sanctified by tradition by which a man may secure a wife--capture or purchase."
"Well, didn't our client capture the actress?"
"Only with her consent--which I assume would be collusion under the French law," said Tutt. "And he certainly didn't buy her--though he might have. It appears that in that happy land a wife costs from five camels up; five camels for a flapper and so on up to thirty or forty camels for an old widow, who invariably brings the highest quotation."
"In Mongolia age evidently ripens and mellows women as it does wine in other countries," reflected Mr. Tutt.
"But you can buy some women for five pounds of rice," added Tutt. "Queer country, isn't it?"
"Not at all!" declared his senior. "Even in America every man pays and pays and pays for his wife--through the nose!"
"However that may be," he ventured, "a man who enters into a marriage contract--"
"Marriage isn't a contract," interrupted Mr. Tutt.
"It's a status--something entirely different--like slavery."
"It's like slavery all right!" agreed Tutt. "But we always speak of a contract of marriage, don't we?"
"Quite inaccurately. The only contract in a marriage is what we commonly refer to as the engagement; that is a real contract and is governed by the laws of contracts. The marriage itself is an entirely different thing. When a marriage is performed and consummated the parties have changed their condition; they bear an entirely new relationship to society, which, as represented by the state, acquires an interest in the transaction, and all you can say about it is that whereas they were both single before, they are married now, and that in the eyes of the law their status has been altered to one as distinct and clearly defined as that which exists between father and son, guardian and ward or master and slave."