“You of all men surely understand a temperamental woman!” exclaimed Penelope, surprised at his keen perception of the details which can fret a woman so sorely in proportion to their apparent unimportance.

St. John hardly seemed to hear her, for he continued: 

“And I want to give her freedom—­freedom from marriage if she wishes it.  That’s why I stipulate that the income ceases If she marries.  I’m trying to weight the balance against her marrying.”

Penelope looked at him questioningly.

“But why?  Surely love is the best thing of all?”

“Love and marriage, my dear, are two very different things,” commented St. John, with an unwonted touch of cynicism.  After a moment he went on:  “Annabel and I—­we loved.  But I couldn’t make her happy.  Our temperaments were unsuited, we looked out on life from different windows.  I’m not at all sure”—­reflectively—­“that the union of sympathetic temperaments, even where less love is, does not result in a much larger degree of happiness than the union of opposites, where there is great love.  The jar and fret is there, despite the attraction, and love starves in an atmosphere of discord.  For the race, probably the mysterious attraction of opposites will produce the best results.  But for individual happiness the sympathetic temperament is the first necessity.”

There was a silence, Penelope feeling that Lord St. John had crystallised in words, thoughts and theories that she sensed as being the foundation of her own opinions, hitherto unrecognised and nebulous.

Presently he spoke again.

“And I don’t really think men are at all suited to have the care and guardianship of women.”

“Unfortunately they’re all that Providence has seen fit to provide,” replied Penelope, with her usual bluntly philosophical acceptance of facts.

“And yet—­we men don’t understand women.  We’re constantly hurting them with our clumsy misconceptions—­with our failure to respond to their complexities.”

Penelope’s eyes grew kind.

“I don’t think you would,” she said.

“Ah, my dear, I’m an old man now and perhaps I understand.  But there was a time when I understood no better than the average youngster who gaily asks some nice woman to trust her future in his hands—­without a second thought as to whether he’s fit for such a trust.  And that was just the time when a little understanding would have given happiness to the woman I loved best on earth.”

He spoke rather wearily, but contrived a smile as Nan entered, carrying a cup of coffee in her hand.

“My compliments, Nan.  Your coffee equals that of any Frenchwoman.”

“A reversion to type.  Don’t forget that Angele de Varincourt is always at the back of me.”

St. John laughed and drank his coffee appreciatively, and after a little further desultory conversation took his departure, leaving the two girls alone together.