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"He would be glad, I should say, if you were to do so. But what is the nature of the means you would suggest?"

"Merely the imposition of an additional tax."

"Are we not sufficiently taxed already?"

"It appears that we are not! If we were, the income would be sufficient to meet the expenditure."

"In private life it sometimes happens that the expenditure exceeds the income, even when, for all just and legitimate purposes, that income is ample; but I suppose that, in public affairs, the case is different. I do not, of course, pretend to understand that difference, but I should like to know what description of tax you would suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer."

"Well," said the reverend gentleman, with a peculiarly bland expression, "that which I contemplate is a tax upon all single men above forty!"

Aunt Eleanor smiled and blushed. She knew what he meant: she knew what would follow—she understood him as well as he could have been understood, even by a widow, but was silent.

"I would," he continued—"I would tax those fellows to the extent of five-and-twenty per cent. upon their incomes. What business have men of that age to be single? Do you not think it disgraceful? Don't you think that a tax of the kind ought to be imposed?"

"Why," said Aunt Eleanor, "it would be a novel tax."

"As far as men are concerned, it certainly would be; but in the feudal times the ladies who held fees or estates which required military services were thus taxed, with the view of inducing them to marry, in order that their husbands might perform those services themselves."

"But no tax in this case can be imposed on those grounds."

"Very true: still I'd tax them! I'd make them either marry or pay."

"They had better pay than be unhappy."

"Granted! But I do not associate unhappiness with marriage: it is, I admit, often the result; but there are men who will, when there is a bright prospect of happiness before them, continue to live in the shade."

"In such a case they cannot, I submit, see that prospect?"

"No, that's the point. They are blind—morally blind: sand-blind, as I have been—selfishly blind. But I'd open their eyes. I'd tax them; there's nothing in life like taxation, when the object is to bring men to their senses. Nor would I permit them to occupy a whole house: they should merely have lodgings. Look at my house; it's a nice house, a good house, a capital house. You might make it a comfortable house, but I can't; and as I can't, what right have I to live in it alone?"

"You cannot be said to live in it alone."

"Conventionally, an unmarried man is single, and a single man lives in the world morally alone. Now, I want to know why I should live in the world alone: in other words, I want to know why I should remain unmarried?"

"I see no reason why you should: except, indeed, that you are happy."