Tom looked unutterably sheepish.

“Is the passion returned?”

“Jasper, don’t talk like that and don’t be a fool.  Of course I have never breathed a word to her.  Why, she hardly knows me, has hardly spoken to me beyond a few simple sentences.  How should I, a miserable author without even a name, speak to her?  Jasper, do you like the name Clarissa?”

“Not half so well as Claire.”

“Nonsense; Claire is well enough as names go, but nothing to Clarissa.  Mark how the ending gives it grace and quaintness; what a grand eighteenth-century ring it has!  It is superb—­so sweet, and at the same time so stately.”

“And replaces Francesca so well in scansion.”

Tom’s face was confession.

“You should see her, Jasper—­her eyes.  What colour are Claire’s?”

“Deep grey.”

“Clarissa’s are hazel brown:  I prefer brown; in fact I always thought a woman should have brown eyes:  we won’t quarrel about inches, but you will give way in the matter of eyes, will you not?”

“Not an inch.”

“It really is wonderful,” said Tom, “how the mere fact of being in love is apt to corrupt a man’s taste.  Now in the matter of voice—­I dare wager that your Claire speaks in soft and gentle numbers.”

“As an Aeolian harp,” said I, and I spoke truth.

“Of course, unrelieved tenderness and not a high note in the gamut.  But you should hear Clarissa; I only ask you to hear her once, and let those glorious accents play upon your crass heart for a moment or two.  O Jasper, Jasper, it shakes the very soul!”

Tom was evidently in a very advanced stage of the sickness; I could not find it in my heart to return his flouts of a month before, so I said—­

“Very well, my dear Tom, I shall look upon your divinity in November.  I do not promise you she will have the effect that you look forward to, but I am glad your Francesca will be worthily played; and, Tom, I am glad you are in love; I think it improves you.”

“It is hopeless—­absolutely hopeless; she is cold as ice.”

“What, with that voice and those eyes?  Nonsense, man.”

“She is cold as ice,” groaned poor Tom; “everyone says so.”

“Of course everyone says so; you ought to be glad of that, for this is the one point on which what everyone says must from the nature of things be false.  Why, man, if she beamed on the whole world, then I might believe you.”

From which it will be gathered that I had learned something from being in love.

So sad did I consider Tom’s case, that I spoke to Claire about it when I saw her next.

“Claire,” I said, “you have often heard me speak of Tom.”

“Really, Jasper, you seldom speak of anybody else.  In fact I am growing quite jealous of this friend.”

After the diversion caused by this speech, I resumed—­

“But really Tom is the best of fellows, and if I talk much of him it is because he is my only friend.  You must see him, Claire, and you will be sure to like him.  He is so clever!”