The Argosy — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The White Witch. “ Yes, certainly, if they can do it calmly, sensibly ; in the right way.” ‘How do you mean calmly? It isn’t love at all if it’s calm.” “Perhaps calm is the wrong word. But I mean that to admire and esteem a person until he or she gradually becomes the most precious thing in the world to one must be the greatest happiness possible in this life; and married life begun like that is nearly sure to be peaceful and sweet.” * But look here! There is a lot of love like that about, but it doesn’t seem in real life to be at all the sublime thing you describe. Why, half the people about here married just like that, and they might be sheep for all they get out of existence.” ‘‘But they are much better and happier like that,” said she with rising excitement. ‘Do you think they are less to be envied than those brothers or cousins who have ruined their brains and their fortunes by dissipation, and have to drag on their lives through years and years of debt and difficulty in consequence? There are some like that in every family.” ‘Of course they must pay for their pleasure. But they did get something out of life first.” ‘You are not in earnest, are you, Mr. Godfrey ?” “Ves, Iam. I know you mean I haven't talked like this before ; no, because I have not thought it before ; a man doesn’t know what he thinks until he begins to feel. There’s the weak point of your ‘calm, peaceful existence:’ 1f a man once finds that he can enjoy something stronger, he can’t go back quietly to it until he has worn out the capacity for less simple pleasures.” All the serenity he had worked so hard to restore in her was gone ina moment. She looked at him silently, in remorseful terror. *‘T have frightened you,” said he, with reassuring gravity, as he sat down on the chair he had been playing with. ‘But you mis- understand me. You are a woman, and I am a man, and we don’t look at life in the same way. I believe you think that from an idle young man in the country I am anxious to become a vicious young man in town. That is notso. I have been woke up rather suddenly from the torpid state in which I have lived an ornament to my native parish for so long; but I don’t think I shall be less of a man for finding out that I am not a vegetable, and I don’t think the —the influence which has done this has anything to reproach itself with.” She grew calmer as he said this; for although he spoke with his eyes fixed earnestly upon her face, his tone and manner were reassur- ingly quiet and self-possessed. ““Now, what dances am I to have to-morrow night?” he went on in quite a different tone. ‘‘ You won’t believe it, but I assure you I am a better waltzer than the peerless Ernest.” At that moment the door opened and Hawkins came in, Gomichboo “Ss (E() m