it went much further he would gain for himself the reputation of being a
limpet who attached himself to any chance rock of feminine amiability.
The kind of woman he cared to associate with would avoid him. If ever he
were to fall in love again, his attentions would be so shop-worn
that----

If ever he were to fall in love again! Within the last twenty-four hours
his irresponsible heart had committed this disastrous folly for a third
time.

He smiled cynically, as though he were two separate persons, one of whom
was cool and calculating, while the other was improvident and
scape-grace. How Lady Dawn would despise him, were he to reveal to her
the stupid commotion of his mind! His excuse for blundering his way into
her privacy had been sufficiently fantastic: that her late husband was
employing his living brain to communicate with her from the dead. It
must have strained her credulity to the breaking-point. If on top of
this he were to propose to her, what possible conclusions could she
draw? Either that in order to gain her intimacy, he had perpetrated a
cruel fraud; or else that he was so lacking in humor as to believe that
Lord Dawn, from beyond the grave, was arranging for his wife's second
marriage. The drollery of a dead husband acting match-maker made him
smile. In the middle of his smiling he pulled himself up. Why not? Why
shouldn't a husband who had wrecked his wife's happiness, try to repair
the damage, if that were possible, when through death he had attained a
kinder knowledge? The Roman Church prayed to the dead whom it canonized.
There were thousands of parents, wives, sweethearts, bereft by the war,
who were asserting that their longing had bridged the gulf and
penetrated----

He shook himself, as though to struggle free from an invisible
assailant. Hallucinations! All these so-called spiritualistic
manifestations were the result of over-taxed imagination. To stick to
facts was the only safe course; and these were the facts in his case. He
had approached Lady Dawn as a matter of duty to tell her the truth about
a husband whom she had not known at his best. She had misinterpreted his
motive and had believed that he had come to confess to her his own
failure. She had been thrown off her guard, had dropped her mask of
stoicism and had lavished on him a reckless kindness. But other women
had been reckless to him in their kindness. Terry had: so had Maisie.
Women's kindness had caused his present predicamen