“Can you help her, Olga?”

“No one can help her,” was the reply in the same dreamy tone.

Then followed a long silence.  Irene gazed at one of the flaring grotesques on the wall, but did not see it.

“May I ask you a question about your own affairs?” she said at length, very gently.  “It isn’t for curiosity.  I have a deeper interest.”

“Of course you may ask Irene.  I’m behaving badly to you, but I don’t mean it.  I’m miserable—­that’s what it comes to.”

“I can see that, dear.  Am I right in thinking that your engagement has been broken off?”

“I’ll tell you; you shall know the whole truth.  It isn’t broken; yet I’m sure it’ll never come to anything.  I don’t think I want it to.  He behaves so strangely.  You know we were to have been married after the twelvemonth, with mother’s consent.  When the time drew near, I saw he didn’t wish it.  He said that after all he was afraid it would be a miserable marriage for me.  The trouble is, he has no character, no will.  He cares for me a great deal; and that’s just why he won’t marry me.  He’ll never do anything—­in art, I mean.  We should have to live on mother’s money, and he doesn’t like that.  If we had been married straight away, as I wanted, two years ago, it would have been all right.  It’s too late now.”

“And this, you feel, is ruining your life?”

“I’m troubled about it, but more on his account than mine.  I’ll tell you, Irene, I want to break off, for good and all, and I’m afraid.  It’s a hard thing to do.”

“Now I understand you.  Do you think”—­Irene added in another tone —­“that it’s well to be what they call in love with the man one marries?”

“Think?  Of course I do!”

“Many people doubt it.  We are told that French marriages are often happier than English, because they are arranged with a practical view, by experienced people.”

“It depends,” replied Olga, with a half-disdainful smile, “what one calls happiness.  I, for one, don’t want a respectable, plodding, money-saving married life.  I’m not fit for it.  Of course some people are.”

“Then, you could never bring yourself to marry a man you merely liked—­in a friendly way?”

“I think it horrible, hideous!” was the excited reply.  “And yet”—­ her voice dropped—­“it may not be so for some women.  I judge only by myself.”

“I suspect, Olga, that some people are never in love—­never could be in that state.”

“I daresay, poor things!”

Irene, though much in earnest, was moved to laugh.

“After all, you know,” she said, “they have less worry.”

“Of course they have, and live more useful lives, if it comes to that.”

“A useful life isn’t to be despised, you know.”

Olga looked at her cousin; so fixedly that Irene had to turn away, and in a moment spoke as though changing the subject.

“Have you heard that Mr. Otway is coming to England again?”