People had overcome
the folly of being afraid to alter their minds and their views
about what they had temporarily believed were permanent bonds and
emotions. Bonds had become old fogeyish. Marriages went to pieces,
the parties in love affairs engaged in a sort of "dance down the
middle" and turn other people's partners. The rearrangement of
figures sometimes made for great witticism. Occasionally people
laughed at themselves as at each other. The admirers of engaging
matrons had been known to renew their youth at the coming-out balls
of lovely daughters in their early teens, and to end by assuming
the flowery chains of a new allegiance. Time had, of course,
been when such a volte face would have aroused condemnation and
indignant discussion, but a humorous leniency spent but little
time in selecting terms of severity. Feather had known of several
such contretemps ending in quite brilliant matches. The enchanting
mothers usually consoled themselves with great ease, and, if the
party of each part was occasionally wittily pungent in her comments
on the other, everybody laughed and nobody had time to criticize.
A man who had had much to bestow and who preferred in youth
to bestow it upon himself was not infrequently more in the mood
for the sharing of marriage when years had revealed to him the
distressing fact that he was not, and had never been, the centre of
the universe, which distressing fact is one so unfairly concealed
from youth in bloom.
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