“Flippant!” exclaimed Douglas, impatiently moving his king.  “I verily believe that if your husband were at the bottom of the Thames at this moment, you would fly off unconcernedly to some other nest, and break hearts with as much indifference as ever.”

“I wish you would not make suggestions of that sort, Sholto.  You make me uncomfortable.  Something might happen to Ned.  I wish he were home.  He is very late.”

“Happy man.  You can be serious when you think about him.  I envy him.”

“What!  Sholto Douglas stoop to envy any mortal!  Prodigious!”

“Yes:  it has come to that with me.  Why should I not envy him?  His career has been upward throughout.  He has been a successful worker in the world, where I have had nothing real to do.  When the good things I had been dreaming of and longing for all my life came in his path, he had them for the mere asking.  I valued them so highly that when I fancied I possessed them, I was the proudest of men.  I am humble enough now that I am beggared.”

“You are really talking the greatest nonsense.”

“No doubt I am.  Still in love, Marian, you see.  There is no harm in telling you so now.”

“On the contrary, it is now that there is harm.  For shame, Sholto!”

“I am not ashamed.  I tell you of my love because now you can listen to me without uneasiness, knowing that it is no longer associated with hope, or desire, or anything but regret.  You see that I do not affect the romantic lover.  I eat very well; I play chess; I go into society; and you reproach me for growing fat.”

Marian bent over the chessboard for a moment to hide her face.  Then she said in a lower voice, “I have thoroughly convinced myself that there is no such thing as love in the world.”

“That means that you have never experienced it.”

“I have told you already that I have never been in love, and that I dont believe a bit in it.  I mean romantic love, of course.”

“I verily believe that you have not.  The future has one more pang in store for me; for you will surely love some day.”

“I am getting too old for that, I fear.  At what age, pray, did you receive the arrow in your heart?”

“When I was a boy, I loved a vision.  The happiest hours of my life were those in which I was slowly, tremulously daring to believe that I had found my vision at last in you.  And then the dreams that followed!  What a career was to have been mine!  I remember how you used to reproach me because I was austere with women and proud with men.  How could I have been otherwise?  I contrasted the gifts of all other women with those of my elect, and the lot of all other men with my own.  Can you wonder that, doing so, I carried my head among the clouds?  You must remember how unfamiliar failure was to me.  At school, at Oxford, in society, I had sought distinction without misgiving, and attained it without difficulty.  My one dearest object