“But if, as you tell me, Sara doesn’t expect to marry this man she cares for, surely she had been unduly hasty?  If he can never be anything to her, need she set aside all thought of matrimony?”

Tim stared at his mother in some surprise.  There was a superficial worldly wisdom in the speech which he would not have anticipated.

“It seems to me rather absurd,” she continued placidly.  “Quixotic—­the sort of romantic ‘live and die unwed’ idea that is quite exploded.  Girls nowadays don’t wither on their virgin stems if the man they want doesn’t happen to be in a position to marry them.  They marry some one else.”

Tim felt almost shocked.  From his childhood he had invested his mother with a kind of rarefied grace of mental and moral qualities commensurate with her physical beauty, and her enunciation of the cynical creed of modern times staggered him.  It never occurred to him that Elisabeth was probing round in order to extract a clear idea of Sara’s attitude in the whole matter, and he forthwith proceeded innocently to give her precisely the information she was seeking.

“Sara isn’t like that, mother,” he said rather shortly.  “It’s just the—­the crystal purity of her outlook which makes her what she is—­so absolutely straight and fearless.  She sees love, and holds by what she believes its demands to be.  I wouldn’t wish her any different,” he added loyally.

“Perhaps not.  But if—­supposing the man proves to have a wife already?  He might be separated from her; Sara doesn’t seem to know much about him.  Or he may have a wife in a lunatic asylum who is likely to live for the next forty years.  What then?  Will Sara never marry if—­if there were a circumstance like that—­a really insurmountable obstacle?”

“No, I don’t believe she will.  I don’t think she would wish to.  If he loves her and she him, spiritually they would be bound to one another—­lovers.  And just the circumstance of his being tied to another woman would make no difference to Sara’s point of view.  She goes beyond material things—­or the mere physical side of love.”

“Then there is no chance for you unless Sara learns to unlove this man?”

Tim regarded her with faint amusement.

“Mother, do you think you could learn to unlove me—­or my father?”

She laughed a little.

“You have me there, Tim,” she acknowledged.  “But”—­hesitating a little—­“Sara knows so little of the man, apparently, that she may have formed a mistaken estimate of his character.  Perhaps he is not really the—­the ideal individual she has pictured him.”

Tim smiled.

“You are a very transparent person, mother mine,” he said indulgently.  “But I’m afraid your hopes of finding that the idol has feet of clay are predestined to disappointment.”

“Have you met the man?” asked Elisabeth sharply.

“I do not even know his name.  But I should imagine him a man of big, fine qualities.”