I deemed secure long before I opened my lips and asked expressly for it.  I think I walked through life at that time like a somnambulist; for I have since seen that I must have been piling mistake upon mistake until out of a chaos of meaningless words and smiles I had woven a Paphian love temple.  At the first menace of disappointment—­a thing as new and horrible to me as death—­I fled the country.  I came back with only the ruins of the doomed temple.  You were not content to destroy a ruin:  the feat was too easy to be glorious.  So you rebuilt it in one hour to the very dome, and lighted its altars with more than their former radiance.  Then, as though it were but a house of cards—­as indeed it was nothing else—­you gave it one delicate touch and razed it to its foundations.  Yet I am afraid those altar lamps were not wholly extinguished.  They smoulder beneath the ruins still.”

“I wonder why they made you the Newdigate poet at Oxford, Sholto:  you mix your metaphors most dreadfully.  Dont be angry with me:  I understand what you mean; and I am very sorry.  I say flippant things because I must.  How can one meet seriousness in modern society except by chaff?”

“I am not angry.  I had rather you did not understand.  The more flippant you are, the more you harden my heart; and I want it to be as hard as the nether millstone.  Your pity would soften me; and I dread that.”

“I believe it does every man good to be softened.  If you ever really felt what you describe, you greatly over-estimated me.  What can you lose by a little more softness?  I often think that men—­particularly good men—­make their way through the world too much as if it were a solid mass of iron through which they must cut—­as if they dared not relax their hardest edge and finest temper for a moment.  Surely, that is not the way to enjoy life.”

“Perhaps not.  Still, it is the way to conquer in life.  It may be pleasant to have a soft heart; but then someone is sure to break it.”

“I do not believe much in broken hearts.  Besides, I do not mean that men should be too soft.  For instance, sentimental young men of about twenty are odious.  But for a man to get into a fighting attitude at the barest suggestion of sentiment; to believe in nature as something inexorable, and to aim at being as inexorable as nature:  is not that almost as bad?”

“Do you know any such man?  You must not attribute that sort of hardness to me.”

“Oh no; I was not thinking of you.  I was not thinking of anyone in fact.  I only put a case.  I sometimes have disputes with Ned on the subject.  One of his cardinal principles is that there is no use in crying for spilt milk.  I always argue that as irremediable disasters are the only ones that deserve or obtain sympathy, he might as well say that there is no use in crying for anything.  Then he slips out of the difficulty by saying that that was just what he meant, and that there is actually no place for regret in a well-regulated scheme of life.  In debating with women, men brazen out all the ridiculous conclusions of which they are convicted; and then they say that there is no use in arguing with a woman.  Neither is there, because the woman is always right.”