s going on. How many times haven't I
felt criminal towards him! But when you're happy, with the tide in your
favour, you become a coward at once...."

V

"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday. It
was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love. But one day he
said to me with a very grave look:

"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it. She's too young, and
you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick as a
rook's feathers, and I was strong and active. I answered him: 'We shall
be married within a month!' We parted in anger. It was a May night, and
I walked out far into the country. There's no remedy for anger, or,
indeed, for anything, so fine as walking. Once I stopped--it was on a
common, without a house or light, and the stars shining like jewels. I
was hot from walking, I could feel the blood boiling in my veins--I said
to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed like a fool. It was the thought
of losing her--I wished to believe myself angry, but really I was afraid;
fear and anger in me are very much the same. A friend of mine, a bit of
a poet, sir, once called them 'the two black wings of self.' And so they
are, so they are...! The next morning I went to Dalton again, and
somehow I made him yield. I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed
to me that no benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss
somewhere, but does that stop us? No, sir, not often....

"We were married on the 30th of June 1876, in the parish church. The
only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two. It had
been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their inn on the
river. My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for lunch. She was
dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers." He paused, leaning
forward over the crutch handle of his stick; trying to conjure up, no
doubt, that long-ago image of his young bride in her dress "the colour of
a pigeon's feathers," with her blue eyes and yellow hair, the little
frown between her brows, the firmly shut red lips, opening to speak the
words, "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health."

"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy. I
wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey top
hat. Even now I should always prefer to