"For several years Madge--who is this young
lady--and I have been in love, and we wish to be married this
evening, but her father and my father are waiting at the foot of
the elevator at this minute, and they have been waiting there all
day. There is no other way for us to leave the building, for the
foot of the stairs is also the foot of the elevator, and, in
fact, when I last peeped, Madge's father was sitting on the
bottom step. It is now exactly fifteen minutes of six, and at six
o'clock they mean to come up and tear Madge and me away, and have
us married."
"To--" I began.
"To each other," said the young man with emotion.
"But I thought that was what you wanted?" I exclaimed.
"Not at all! Not at all!" said the young man, and the young
woman added her voice in protest, too. "I am the head of the
Statistical Department of the Society for the Obtaining of a
Uniform National Divorce Law, and the work in that department has
convinced me beyond a doubt that forced marriages always end
unhappily. In eighty-seven thousand six hundred and four cases of
forced marriages that I have tabulated I have found that eighty-
seven thousand six hundred and three have been unhappy.
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