It is an ancient trick, I know, and an uncommendable, this of chronicling the lives of two people only up to the church door. In the lives of most people, I hear on all sides of me, the tragedy only begins after marriage. Well, perhaps so. But I hope, for my part, that for Dick Lancaster and his wife there is not to be much more of battling against the buffets of the world. For them there had been so much of tragedy--the tragedy that is almost intangible, the tragedy that underlies the surface flippancy of our modern life--before Fate chose to let them come together, that it would seem just that thereafter their life be but a pleasant pastoral. As for that I cannot say. I know that Dick's fame grows with each passing year; and that both he and his wife are beginning to lose the look of weariness that was on them when they came back to us.
I have not given this chronicle as an example or a lesson. I do not mean in telling it to declare my belief in the theory that Christ's words "Go, and sin no more!" can be perpetually applied in the practice of modern life. I have transcribed one episode, one group of characters, one set of lives, and having done so, I refer the responsibility whither it belongs to the Being that mapped, that directed those life-threads. I do not mean to say that in like instances, a similar course would inevitably lead to happiness. I only say that yesterday, as I was walking in my garden, watching the blue-jays quarreling in the firs, I heard Dick and Dorothy talking and laughing on their veranda. There was something so infectious about their gladness that I paused and listened, without thought of curiosity, but rather in something of wistful appreciation of their happiness.
"I had not thought," I heard him say, "that the world would ever seem so fair to me."
There was a pause, and I fancied I heard a kiss, but I will not be sure.
"And all," he went on, "is thanks to you."
Again there was a long silence! And then there came a sudden frightened whisper from her: "Dick--do you think we shall ever see--him--again?"
He laughed bitterly. "No, dear. He is too vain, too selfish, too fond of his own safety. Besides--what matter if we did. He belongs to the things that we have forgotten."