2003 FRQ #2

        If anyone had asked Carol at what precise moment 

        she fell in love, or where Howard Mitchell proposed 

        to her, she would have imagined, quite sincerely, a

        scene that involved all at once the Seine, moonlight, 

5      barrows of violets, acacias in flower, and a confused, 

        misty background of the Eiffel tower and little 

        crooked streets. This was what everyone expected, 

        and she had nearly come to believe it herself. 

        Actually, he had proposed at lunch, over a tuna-fish 

10    salad. He and Carol had known each other less than 

        three weeks, and their conversation, until then, had 

        been limited to their office—an American govern-

        ment agency—and the people in it. Carol was twenty-

        two; no one had proposed to her before, except an 

15    unsuitable medical student with no money and eight 

        years’ training still to go. She was under the illusion 

        that in a short time she would be so old no one                would ask her again. She accepted at once, and                Howard celebrated by ordering an extra bottle of    20    wine. Both  would have liked champagne, as a more            emphatic symbol of the unusual, but each was too            diffident to suggest it. 

        The fact that Carol was not in love with Howard 

        Mitchell did not dismay her in the least. From a series 

25    of helpful college lectures on marriage she had 

        learned that a common interest, such as a liking for 

        Irish setters, was the true basis for happiness, and            that the illusion of love was a blight imposed by the            film industry, and almost entirely responsible for the 30    high rate of divorce. Similar economic backgrounds, 

        financial security, belonging to the same church—

        these were the pillars of the married union. By an 

        astonishing coincidence, the fathers of Carol and 

        Howard were both attorneys and both had been 

35    defeated in their one attempt to get elected a judge. 

        Carol and Howard were both vaguely Protestant, 

        although a serious discussion of religious beliefs 

        would have gravely embarrassed them. And Howard, 

        best of all, was sober, old enough to know his own 

40    mind, and absolutely reliable. He was an economist 

        who had sense enough to attach himself to a                    corporation that continued to pay his salary during            his loan to the government. There was no reason for         the engagement or the marriage to fail.

 45    Carol, with great efficiency, nearly at once set 

        about the business of falling in love. Love required 

        only the right conditions, like a geranium. It would 

        wither exposed to bad weather or in dismal surround-

        ings; indeed, Carol rated the chances of love in a 

50    cottage or a furnished room at zero. Given a good

        climate, enough money, and a pair of good-natured, 

        intelligent (her college lectures had stressed this) 

        people, one had only to sit back and watch it grow. 

        All winter, then, she looked for these right conditions 

55    in Paris. When, at first, nothing happened, she blamed 

        it on the weather. She was often convinced she would 

        fall deeply in love with Howard if only it would stop 

        raining. Undaunted, she waited for better times. 

        Howard had no notion of any of this. His sudden 

60    proposal to Carol had been quite out of character—

        he was uncommonly cautious—and he alternated 

        between a state of numbness and a state of self-

        congratulation. Before his engagement he had 

        sometimes been lonely, a malaise he put down to 

65    overwork, and he was discontented with his bachelor 

        households, for he did not enjoy collecting old pottery 

        or making little casserole dishes. Unless he stumbled 

        on a competent housemaid, nothing ever got done. 

        This in itself would not have spurred him into 

70    marriage had he not been seriously unsettled by the 

        visit of one of his sisters, who advised him to marry 

        some nice girl before it was too late. “Soon,” she told 

        him, “you’ll just be a person who fills in at dinner.” 

        Howard saw the picture at once, and was deeply 

75    moved by it. 

(1953)