“You are not listening,” said he sharply to the young man.

Their eyes met.  Norman’s eyes were twinkling.  “No,” said he, “I am waiting.”

There was the suggestion of an answering gleam of sardonic humor in Galloway’s cold gray eyes.  “Waiting for what?”

“For you to finish with me as father confessor, to begin with me as lawyer.  Pray don’t hurry.  My time is yours.”  This with a fine air of utmost suavity and respect.

In fact, while Galloway was doddering on and on with his fake moralities, Norman was thinking of his own affairs, was wondering at his indifference about Dorothy.  The night before—­the few hours before—­when he had dealt with her so calmly, he, even as he talked and listened and acted, had assumed that the enormous amount of liquor he had been consuming was in some way responsible.  He had said to himself, “When I am over this, when I have had sleep and return to the normal, I shall again be the foolish slave of all these months.”  But here he was, sober, having taken only enough whisky to prevent an abrupt let-down—­here he was viewing her in the same tranquil light.  No longer all his life; no longer even dominant; only a part of life—­and he was by no means certain that she was an important part.

How explain the mystery of the change?  Because she had voluntarily come back, did he feel that she was no longer baffling but was definitely his?  Or had passion running madly on and on dropped—­perhaps not dead, but almost dead—­from sheer exhaustion?—­was it weary of racing and content to saunter and to stroll? . . .  He could not account for the change.  He only knew that he who had been quite mad was now quite sane. . . .  Would he like to be rid of her?  Did he regret that they were tied together?  No, curiously enough.  It was high time he got married; she would do as well as another.  She had beauty, youth, amiability, physical charm for him.  There was advantage in the fact that her inferiority to him, her dependence on him, would enable him to take as much or as little of her as he might feel disposed, to treat her as the warrior must ever treat his entire domestic establishment from wife down to pet dog or cat or baby. . . .  No, he did not regret Josephine.  He could see now disadvantages greater than her advantages.  All of value she would have brought him he could get for himself, and she would have been troublesome—­exacting, disputing his sway, demanding full value or more in return for the love she was giving with such exalted notions of its worth.

“You are married?” Galloway suddenly said, interrupting his own speech and Norman’s thought.

“Yes,” said Norman.

“Just married, I believe?”

“Just.”

Young and old, high and low, successful and failed, we are a race of advice-givers.  As for Galloway, he was not one to neglect that showy form of inexpensive benevolence.  “Have plenty of children,” said he.