“Well, it’s a disappointment,” said Waymark, “but we must try again.  I myself am so hardened to this kind of thing that I fear you will think me unsympathetic.  It’s like having a tooth out.  You never quite get used to it, but you learn after two or three experiments to gauge the moment’s torture at its true value.  Re-direct your parcel, and fresh hope beats out the old discouragement”

“It wasn’t altogether that which was making me feel restless and depressed,” Casti said, when they had left the house and were walking along.  “I suppose I’m not quite right in health just at present.  I seem to have lost my natural good spirits of late; the worst of it is, I can’t settle to my day’s work as I used to.  In fact, I have just been applying for a new place, that of dispenser at the All Saints’ Hospital.  If I get it, it would make my life a good deal more independent.  I should live in lodgings of my own, and have much more time to myself.”

Waymark encouraged the idea strongly.  But his companion could not be roused to the wonted cheerfulness.  After a long silence, he all at once put a strange question, and in an abashed way.

“Waymark, have you ever been in love?”

Osmond laughed, and looked at his friend curiously.

“Many thousand times,” was his reply.

“No, but seriously,” urged Julian.

“With desperate seriousness for two or three days at a time.  Never longer.”

“Well now, answer me in all earnestness.  Do you believe it possible to love a woman whom in almost every respect you regard as your inferior, who you know can’t understand your thoughts and aspirations, who has no interest in anything above daily needs?”

“Impossible to say.  Is she good-looking?”

“Suppose she is not; yet not altogether plain.”

“Then does she love you?”

Julian reddened at the direct application.

“Suppose she seems to.”

“Seems to, eh?—­On the whole, I should say that I couldn’t declare it possible or the contrary till I had seen the girl.  I myself should be very capable of falling desperately in love with a girl who hadn’t an idea in her head, and didn’t know her letters.  All I should ask would be passion in return, and—­well, yes, a pliant and docile character.”

“You are right; the character would go for much.  Never mind, we won’t speak any more of the subject.  It was an absurd question to ask you.”

“Nevertheless, you have made me very curious.”

“I will tell you more some other time; not now.  Tell me about your own plans.  What decision have you come to?”