eved that he is incapable of love,
woman-kind arises in a body and abuses him in unmeasured terms. He is
selfish. He is arrogant. He is so conceited that he thinks no one good
enough for him. He is a stone, a prig, a hypocrite, a maniac, a monster,
a statue, and especially he is a bore. In other words, he is a man's
man, and not a woman's man; and unless it can be proved that his madness
proceeds from disappointed love, even Dives in hell is not further
removed from forgiveness than he. Men may admire his strength, his
talents, his perseverance, and some friend will be found foolish enough
to sing his praises to some woman of the world. She will answer the
panegyrist with a blank stare, and will very likely say coldly, that he
is a bore, or that he is very rude. No amount of praise or ingenious
argument will extort an admission that the unfortunate man is worthy of
human sympathy. And yet, he may be very human, after all. At all events,
if we say with the Greek philosopher that a man shall not be called
happy until he be dead, we should not allow that he is beyond the reach
of love until the life has gone out of him, certainly not until he is
sixty years of age at the very least.

Now Paul Patoff was not sixty years old when he found himself in the
quiet English country house, and looked on his fair English cousin and
loved her. He was, as the times go, a young man, just entered upon the
prime of his life, just past the age when youth is considered foolish,
and just reaching the time when it is considered desirable. The fact
that he had not loved before was not likely to make his passion less
strong now that it had come at last, and he knew it, as men generally
understand themselves better when they are in love with a good woman. He
asked himself, indeed, why he had so suddenly given himself up, heart
and soul, to the lovely girl he had known only for a month; but such
questions are necessarily futile, because the heart does not always go
through the formality of asking the mind's consent before acting, and
the mind consequently refuses to be called to account in a matter for
which it is in no way responsible. It seemed to Paul very strange that
after so many years of a busy life, in which no passion but ambition had
played any part, he should all at once find his whole existence involved
in a new and un-dreamed-of labyrinth of feeling. But though it was
indeed a labyrinth, from which he did not even desire to escape, he