Barry Pain

“ All it would imply would be that the parties to it would see if an engagement were possible; it would not mean that they loved each other, but that they had thought it worth while to see if they could love each other, to test that question by frequent meetings and so on. If, for instance, an old man, or at least a middle-aged man, finds that he loves a young girl——”
At this point my heart suddenly turned into a man beating carpets, and I wanted to run away.
“The man could not perhaps, unless he felt very sure, ask for an engagement; he might ask for the first step—the experiment. ”

“ It must be a shock for a woman to suddenly transfer herself from the dead chill of an ordinary social meeting to the—the intimacies of a betrothal. There should be a preliminary step, something which might be called the experiment, something less than an engagement and rather more than disengagement, as things stand at present the engagement is generally public, and if it is broken off one of the parties to it is generally much abused. ”

“ I answered; “you have given me an impression that things in general are all wrong, that they can't be put right, and that it doesn't matter, but is on the contrary rather funny.”
“Well,” he said, “in this case I have a remedy to propose. I think that the present method of getting married—which I propose to remedy—is distinctly disgraceful.” ”