The masseuse came in, sliding on tiptoe from one door to another.
"Victorine--_ma masseuse_! In a minute, in a minute, Madame Tenier. I'll be with you in a minute. Where was I? Teddy, you do not know us professional women--we are wrestlers, we are always struggling with you men--I warn you. No two ways. She will never be happy, my dear boy--because she never is happy. We are never happy, or we would not be what we are. And what of moods, day in and day out. _Tiens_--I'll tell you what you'll be--another Victorine. Victorine, _où diable es-tu_? No, no, Teddy; don't be a big fool; don't be an idiot. You are so nice. You can amuse yourself so well. Don't put your head in a noose. If she loves you now, she won't to-morrow; she can't help it. Then where'll you be--in the soup, _hein_. And she? No, no, believe me, Teddy, never marry, in the first place, and then never marry one of us."
"There's something in what she says," thought Beecher, as he moodily descended in the elevator. "She knows her own kind better than I do."
He looked undecidedly at the clock and went to pay a dinner call on Mrs. Craig Fontaine. In ten minutes they were on the same subject.
"I am terribly upset," said the young widow. "I don't want any trouble to come to you, and I can't help thinking that what you are considering is a very risky step. In the first place, Teddy, you are too young."
He made a movement of impatience at this repetition, which had begun to offend his sense of dignity.
"You don't know what is ahead," she said warmly. "You do not realize that points of view change. What you seek now, romance, adventure, is not what you'll seek at thirty-five, and life is mostly after thirty-five, Ted. Today you are willing to sacrifice every friend in the world for one love; tomorrow you will realize that friends are our life, their ways, their companionship, their interests. Today you hold yourself very cheaply; tomorrow you will wake up, look round you, see what other women have brought to their husbands, and you will say, 'What am I worth?'"
"You believe in mercenary marriages, then?" he said irritably.
"No, but I believe in staying in the same society in which you belong. I don't want to be cruel, but Miss Charters is of another world. I know there is nothing against her. She may be able to enter your world, and then again she may not want to--may prefer the freedom of her own, and you will follow her. Have you thought of that? Your friends must be your wife's friends, or you will give them up. Marriage, Teddy, which can be the most decisive act in a man's life, is the one he throws away the most lightly. I'm only afraid you may wake up to what you might have done, Teddy. You are young, eager, you are not yet bored. You may feel the desire to be something, to do something that counts in your life. I don't want you then to wake up and realize that another marriage might have given you the connections you wanted, the added opportunity. At this moment marriage appears to you the only thing that counts; you will realize some day that it is the least thing in it." She smiled, as he looked amazed, and added: "No amount of discussion can make you understand these things--they must be lived. But, Teddy, before you leap, ask yourself seriously what you are worth."