You see, Vic," Dick said, after a minute or two of silence, laying
down the cigar and driving his elbow into the sofa cushion, and leaning
his head on his hand. He looked past me absently towards the fender,
and spoke as a person does whose opinion has long since been formed.
"We can't hold over anything in this life, opportunities, our own
powers, health, youth, they are all things you can't store for the
future. All we can do is to use them when they are put into our hands.
Still less can we reserve and warehouse our own feelings and emotions,
and least of all, those of others. You might compare passion to a gas.
If you allow gas its expansion it diffuses itself and is lost. If you
subject it to confinement with close pressure, it becomes a liquid and
loses its original form. It is the same with passion. It is impossible
to maintain it as such. Either it evaporates in gratification or it
undergoes some metamorphosis in suppression."

I said nothing. There was a sort of coldness and weight in his words
and tone that increased my own apprehensions.

"You can keep nothing up to the pitch of a crisis. We all know that.
Even a kettle of water, when it is once boiling, you cannot keep it so.
It must boil over into the flames or simmer down or dry up. And if you
reject a woman at the crisis of her passion, there is an enormous
probability that, in waiting, her virtue or her inclination or her
health will break down. Either her feelings may transport her into some
folly or they may cool. If her will is too strong to allow the folly,
and her nature too ardent to permit the cooling, then her constitution
must give way. This last is what, judging from all I see, I should
think--since you ask my opinion, old fellow, you know--has happened in
Lucia's case."

I looked at him with a faint feeling of surprise. His manner, voice,
and words conveyed such an idea of certainty and perfect decision in
his own mind.

"Yes," I answered; "I suppose that is it. Well, that is what she told
me, virtually, herself."

"You cannot wonder at it!"

I coloured hotly as I answered,--

"I know it seems as if I had been a confounded prig in refusing her
last year--people may say so; but if I had given in and kept her with
me in Paris, then everybody would have been slanging me for that!"

Dick laughed.

"No, Victor; I am not slanging you for one or the other course. You
acted up to your own principle--every fellow must do that; but I am not