They looked solemnly into the crepitant blaze of the new fire.  He grasped her hand; but suddenly released it and asked querulously, as if he had remembered certain tedious obligations:  “And Ellen, does she like the house?”

She was appalled, “Yes, yes!  I think so,” she stammered.

“Good,” he said curtly, and buried his head in her lap again.

For as long as possible she endured her dismay; then, bending forward and trying to twist his face round so that she could read it, she asked unsteadily, “Richard, you do love Ellen, don’t you?”

He sat up and met her eyes.  “Of course I do.  Have you been thirty-six hours with her without seeing that I must?  She—­she’s a lamp with a double burner.  There’s her beauty, and her dear, funny, young little soul.  It’s good to have someone that one can worship and befriend at the same time.  Yes, we’re going to be quite happy.”  His eyes slid away from hers evasively, then hardened and resolved to be honest, and returned again.  “Mother, I tell you this is the end.”  After that his honesty faltered.  He chose to take it that his mother was looking so fixedly at him because she had not understood the meaning of his words, so he repeated soberly, “I tell you, this is the end.  The end of love making for me.  I shall never love any other woman but Ellen as long as I live.”  And he turned to the fire, the set of his shoulders confessing what his lips would not—­that though he loved Ellen, though he wanted Ellen, there was something imperfect in the condition of his love which made him leaden and uneager.

“That’s right, that’s right; you must be good to her,” Marion murmured, and stroked his hair.  “I don’t think you could have done better than your Ellen if you’d searched the whole world,” she said timidly, trying to give him a cue for praise of his love.  “It’s such astonishing luck to find a girl whose sense will be as much solid good to you as a fortune in the bank and who looks as pretty as a rose-tree at the same time.”

He made no response.  The words were strangled in her throat, and she fell to tapping her foot rhythmically against the fender.  Her eyes were moist; this was so different from the talk she had expected.

Presently his shoulders twitched.  “Don’t do that, mother dear,” he said impatiently.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she answered wearily.  She threw herself back in her chair and clenched her fists.  Desperation fevered her, and she began to speak vindictively.  “Of course it was a great relief to me when I saw the kind of girl Ellen is, considering how up till now you’ve sidled past women of any sort of character as if you’d heard that men got sent to prison for loving any but fools.”

He laughed uneasily.

“Yes,” she went on; “you always seemed to be looking carefully for anything you could find that was as insipid as a water-melon.  You can’t, you know, possibly count your love-affairs as amongst your successes.”  She jerked her head back, her lips retracted in a kind of grin.  “Mariquita de Rojas!” she jeered.