“I think I do know what it means,” Juliet said slowly.  “I’ve looked on, you know.  I’ve seen—­a good many things.”

“Just as you’re looking on now, eh?” said the squire, grimly smiling.  “Well, you profit by my experience—­if you can!  And if love ever comes your way, hang on to it, hang on to it for all you’re worth, even if you drop everything else to do it!  It’s the gift of the gods, my dear, and if you throw it away once it’ll never come your way again.”

“No, I know,” said Juliet.  She rested her arm on the mantelpiece, gravely watching him.  “I’ve noticed that.”

“Noticed it, have you?” He flung her a look as he passed.  “You’ve never been in love, that’s certain, never seriously I mean,—­never up to the neck.”

“No, never so deep as that!” said Juliet.

He passed on to the end of the room, and came to a sudden stand before the window.  “I—­have!” he said, and his voice came with an odd jerkiness as if it covered some emotion that he could not wholly control.  “I won’t bore you with details.  But I loved a woman once—­I loved her madly.  And she loved me.  But—­Fate—­came between.  She’s dead now.  Her troubles are over, and I’m not such a selfish brute as to want her back.  Yet I sometimes think to myself—­that if I’d married that woman—­I’d have made her happy, and I’d have been a better man myself than I am to-day.”  He swung round restlessly, found her steady eyes upon him, and came back to her.  “The fact of the matter is, Miss Moore,” he said, “I was a skunk ever to marry at all—­after that.”

“It depends how you look at it,” she said gently.

“Don’t you look at it that way?” he said, regarding her curiously.

She hesitated momentarily.  “Not entirely, no.  The woman was dead and you were alone.”

“I was—­horribly alone,” he said.

“I don’t think it was wrong of you to marry,” she said.  “Only—­you ought to love your wife.”

“Ah!” he said.  “I thought we agreed that love comes only once.”

She shook her head.  “Not quite that.  Besides, there are many kinds of love.”  Again for a second she hesitated looking straight at him.  “Shall I tell you something?  I don’t know whether I ought.  It is almost like a breach of confidence—­though it was never told to me.”

“What is it?” he said imperatively.

She made a little gesture of yielding.  “Yes, I will tell you.  Mr. Fielding, you might make your wife love you—­so dearly—­if you cared to take the trouble.”

“What?” he said.

Her eyes met his with a faint, faint smile.  “Doesn’t it seem absurd,” she said, “that it should fall to me—­a comparative stranger—­to tell you this, when you have been together for so long?  It is the truth.  She is just as lonely and unhappy as you are.  You could transform the whole world for her—­if you only would.”

“What!  Give her her own way in everything?” he said.  “Is that what you’re advising?”