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Page 53
'_Ah, non. Je ne crois pas_.'
'You don't believe my wits were sufficient to the task? I was like the
London hospitals--practically unendowed; only they wouldn't support me
by voluntary contributions. So--I wrote for the newspapers, I'm
afraid.'
'For the newspapers?'
'Oh, I admit, it's scandalous. But you may as well know the worst. A
penny-a-liner! But I shan't do so any more, now that I have stepped
into the shoes of my uncle. You'll never catch me fatiguing myself
with work, now that I've got enough to live on!'
'Lazy!'
'Oh, I'm everything that's reprehensible.'
'And you never married?'
'I don't think so.'
'Aren't you sure?'
'As sure as one can be of anything in this doubtful world.'
'But why didn't you?'
'_Pas si b�te_. Marriage is such a bore. I never met a woman I could
bear the thought of passing all my life with.'
'Conceited!'
'I daresay. If you like false modesty better, I'll try to meet your
wishes. What woman would have had a poor devil like me?'
'Still, marriage is, after all, very much in vogue.'
'Yes, but it's mad. Either you must love the woman you marry, or you
mustn't love her. But if you marry a woman without loving her, I hope
you'll not deny you're doing a very shocking thing. If, on the
contrary, you do love her, _raison de plus_ for not marrying her
Fancy marrying a woman you love; and then, day by day, watching the
beautiful wild flower of love fatten into a domestic cabbage! Isn't
that a syllogism?'
'You have been in love then?'
'Never.'
'Never?'
'Oh, I've made a fool of myself occasionally, of course. But I've
never been in love.'
'Except with H�l�ne de la Granjolaye?'
'Oh, yes, I was in love with her--when I was ten.'
'Till you were...?'
'Till I was...?'
'How long did it take you to get over it, I mean?'
'I don't know. It wore away gradually. The tooth of time.'
'You're not at all in love with her any more?'
'After twenty years? And she a Queen? I hope I know my place.'
'But if you were to meet her again?'
'I should probably suffer a horrible disillusion.'
'But you have found, at any rate, that "first love is best"?'
'First and last. The last shall be first,' he said oracularly.
'Don't you smoke?' she asked.
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