disappointment, and must gnaw my heart in solitude and despair."
"Oh I no," she cheerfully retorted; "there is no occasion to do any thing so horrible. Very likely Phoebus and I will not suit one another; and, in that case, we can get a divorce, and then I can marry you, if you still wish it."
She said this with so much simplicity and sincerity, that I had not the heart to tell her how contrary such a proposed course of conduct was to all my ideas of what was right and proper.
Stammering out some stupid expressions of gratitude and thanks, I feigned some pressing engagement I had forgotten, and muttering an apology for my rudeness, I fled and sought the solitude of my home to collect my thoughts and recover from the shock I had received. As I retired, I marked her look of bewildered astonishment, at what, according to her notions, she must have considered my unaccountable behaviour.
Alone in my house, I had time and leisure to brood over my disappointment, and also to reflect on the strange ideas of the Colymbians with regard to marriage and the relations of the sexes. Here was a lovely and innocent girl with simple tastes and a well-cultivated mind, marrying all of a sudden a man whom she could not be said to love, evidently with the view of seeing whether they would suit one another, and so far from being sure on that subject, she seemed rather to incline to think that they would not, in which cases he would have no hesitation in discarding him and trying another. And no one seemed to think such conduct at all extraordinary or improper. We would hardly treat a partner in a
