‘When she has got a husband, you mean.’

‘Yes—­when she has a husband.’

‘It’s the same with a man when he has a wife.’  Hitherto the conversation had had so much of milk-and-water in its composition that Dalrymple found himself able to keep it up and go on with his background at the same time.  If she could only be kept in the same dim cloud of sentiment, if the hot rays of the sun of romance could be kept from breaking through the mist till Miss Van Siever should come, it might still be well.  He had known her to wander about within the clouds for an hour together, without being able to find her way into the light.  ’It’s all the same with a man when he has got a wife,’ he said.  ’Of course one has to suffer for two, when one, so to say, is two.’

‘And what happens when one has to suffer for three?’ she asked.

‘You mean when a woman has children?’

’I mean nothing of the kind, Conway; and you must know that I do not, unless your feelings are indeed blunted.  But worldly success has, I suppose, blunted them.’

‘I rather fancy not,’ he said.  ’I think they are pretty nearly as sharp as ever.’

’I know mine are.  Oh, how I wish I could rid myself of them!  But it cannot be done.  Age will not blunt them—­I am sure of that,’ said Mrs Broughton.  ‘I wish it could.’

He had determined not to talk about herself if the subject could be in any way avoided; but now he felt that he was driven up into a corner;—­now he was forced to speak to her of her own personality.  ’You have no experience yet as to that.  How can you say what age will do?’

‘Age does not go by years,’ said Mrs Dobbs Broughton.  ’We all know that.  “His hair was grey, but not with years.”  Look here, Conway,’ and she moved back her tresses from off her temples to show him that there were grey hairs behind.  He did not see them; and had they been very visible she might not perhaps have been so ready to exhibit them.  ’No one can say that length of years has blanched them.  I have no secrets from you about my age.  One should not be grey before one has reached thirty.’

‘I did not see a changed hair.’

’’Twas the fault of your eyes, then, for there are plenty of them.  And what is it that has made them grey?’

‘They say hot rooms will do it.’

’Hot rooms!  No, Conway, it does not come from heated atmosphere.  It comes from a cold heart, a chilled heart, a frozen heart, a heart that is all ice.’  She was getting out of the cloud into the heat now, and he could only hope that Miss Van Siever would come soon.  ’The world is beginning with you, Conway, and you are as old as I am.  It is ending with me, and yet I am as young as you are.  But I do not know why I talk of this.  It is simply folly—­utter folly.  I had not meant to speak of myself; but I did wish to say a few words to you of your own future.  I suppose I may still speak to you as a friend?’