‘For forty years,’ he quavered, ’I made love to every pretty woman I met, in the search for happiness.  I may have got five per cent. return on my outlay, which is perhaps not bad in these hard times; but I certainly did not get even that in happiness.  I got it in—­other ways.’

‘And if you had to begin afresh?’

He stood up, turned his back on the room, and looked down at me from his bent height.  His knotted hands were shaking, as they always shook.

‘I would do the same again,’ he whispered.

‘Would you?’ I said, looking up at him.  ‘Truly?’

’Yes.  Only the fool and the very young expect happiness.  The wise merely hope to be interested, at least not to be bored, in their passage through this world.  Nothing is so interesting as love and grief, and the one involves the other.  Ah! would I not do the same again!’

He spoke gravely, wistfully, and vehemently, as if employing the last spark of divine fire that was left in his decrepit frame.  This undaunted confession of a faith which had survived twenty years of inactive meditation, this banner waved by an expiring arm in the face of the eternity that mocks at the transience of human things, filled me with admiration.  My eyes moistened, but I continued to look up at him.

‘What is the title of the new book?’ he demanded casually, sinking into a chair.

‘Burning Sappho,’ I answered.  ‘But the title is very misleading.’

‘Bright star!’ he exclaimed, taking my hand.  ’With such a title you will surely beat the record of the Good Dame.’

‘Hsh!’ I enjoined him.

Jocelyn Sardis was coming towards us.

The Good Dame was the sobriquet which Lord Francis had invented to conceal—­or to display—­his courteous disdain of the ideals represented by Mrs. Sardis, that pillar long established, that stately dowager, that impeccable doyenne of serious English fiction.  Mrs. Sardis had captured two continents.  Her novels, dealing with all the profound problems of the age, were read by philosophers and politicians, and one of them had reached a circulation of a quarter of a million copies.  Her dignified and indefatigable pen furnished her with an income of fifteen thousand pounds a year.

Jocelyn Sardis was just entering her mother’s world, and she had apparently not yet recovered from the surprise of the discovery that she was a woman; a simple and lovable young creature with brains amply sufficient for the making of apple-pies.  As she greeted Lord Francis in her clear, innocent voice, I wondered sadly why her mother should be so anxious to embroider the work of Nature.  I thought if Jocelyn could just be left alone to fall in love with some average, kindly stockbroker, how much more nearly the eternal purpose might be fulfilled....

‘Yes, I remember,’ Lord Francis was saying.  ’It was at St. Malo.  And what did you think of the Breton peasant?’