eserve. And about your work: you tell me all that. It is a great thing
in my life, your work. Perhaps you don't realize how sometimes I live in
the book that you are doing, almost as if I were writing it myself. But
your inner life--"

"But I have been frankness itself with you," said Artois. "To no one
have I ever said so much as to you."

"Yes, I know, about many things. But about emotion, love,--not
friendship, the other love--do you get on without that? When you say
your nature has always been older than mine, do you mean that it has
always been harder to move by love, that it has had less need of love?"

"I think so. For many years in my life I think that work has filled the
place love occupies in many, perhaps in most men's lives. Everything
comes second to work. I know that, because if any one attempts to
interfere with my work, or to usurp any of the time that should be
given to it, any regard I may have for that person turns at once to
irritation, almost to hatred."

"I have never done that?"

"You--no. Of course, I have been like other men. When I was young--well,
Hermione, after all I am a Frenchman, and though I am of Normandy, still
I passed many years in Paris, as you know."

"All that I understand. But the real thing? Such as I have known?"

"I have never broken my heart for any one, though I have known
agitations. But even those were long ago. And since I was thirty-five
I have never felt really dominated by any one. Before that time I
occasionally passed under the yoke, I believe, like other men. Why do
you fix your eyes on me like that?"

"I was wondering if you could ever pass under the yoke again."

"Honestly, I do not think so. I am not sure. When can one be certain
that one will never be, or do, this or that? Surely,"--he smiled,--"you
are not afraid for me?"

"I do not say that. But I think you have forces in you not fully
exercised even by your work."

"Possibly. But there the years do really step in and count for
something, even for much. There is no doubt that as the years increase,
the man who cares at all for intellectual pleasures is able to care
for them more, is able to substitute them, without keen regret, without
wailing and gnashing of teeth, for certain other pleasures, to which,
perhaps, formerly he clung. That is why the man who is mentally and
bodily--you know what I mean?"

"Yes."

"Has such an immense advantage in years of decline over the man who is
merely a bodi