"A woman's memory! When I think of a woman's memory--in fact, I do not
like to think of a woman's memory. One can intrude in imagination into
many places; but a woman's memory--"

Mr. Horace seemed to lose his thread. It had been said of him in
his youth that he wrote poetry--and it was said against him. It was
evidently such lapses as these that had given rise to the accusation.
And as there was no one less impatient under sentiment or poetry
than madame, her feet began to agitate themselves as if Jules were
perorating some of his culinary inanities before her.

"And a man's memory!" totally misunderstanding him. "It is not there
that I either would penetrate, my friend. A man--"

When madame began to talk about men she was prompted by imagination
just as much as was Mr. Horace when he talked about women. But what a
difference in their sentiments! And yet he had received so little, and
she so much, from the subjects of their inspiration. But that seems to
be the way in life--or in imagination.

"That you should"--he paused with the curious shyness of the old
before the word "love"--"that you two should--marry--seemed natural,
inevitable, at the time."

Tradition records exactly the same comment by society at the time on
the marriage in question. Society is ever fatalistic in its comments.

"But the natural--the inevitable--do we not sometimes, I wonder,
perform them as Jules does his accidents?"