Why don't you do it,
Acton?"
I returned, as seriously as could have been expected:
"Perhaps it would be thought rather intimate. People don't like to talk
of such things."
"They're ashamed," Minver declared. "The lovers don't either of them, in
a given case, like to let others know how much the woman had to do with
making the offer, and how little the man."
Minver's point provoked both Wanhope and myself to begin a remark at the
same time. We begged each other's pardon, and Wanhope insisted that I
should go on.
"Oh, merely this," I said. "I don't think they're so much ashamed as
that they have forgotten the different stages. You were going to say--?"
"Very much what you said. It's astonishing how people forget the vital
things and remember trifles. Or perhaps as we advance from stage to
stage what once seemed the vital things turn to trifles. Nothing can be
more vital in the history of a man and a woman than how they became
husband and wife, and yet not merely the details, but the main fact,
would seem to escape record if not recollection.
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