hin a couple of years. Though I cannot explain, I am sure.
It is not only that you have been a sedentary man all these years. You
have also been a thinker. You think intellectual society is of no
moment to you. Well, you are very tired, you see. Also, bear this in
mind: in the Old World, even for a man who lives alone on a mountain-top,
there is more of intellectuality--in the very atmosphere, in the
buildings and roads, the hedges and the ditches--than the best cities
of the New World have to offer. I suppose it is a matter of tradition
and association. The endeavours of the New World are material; a
proportion at least of the Old World's efforts are abstract and ideal.
You will see. I give you two years, or nearly. And I don't think for a
moment it will be wasted time.'

Sometimes our talk was far more suggestive of the intercourse between
two men, fellow-workers even, than that of a man and a woman. Never, I
think, was it very suggestive of what it really was: conversation
between a middle-aged, and, upon the whole, broken man, and a woman
young, beautiful, wealthy, and unattached. Love, in the passionate,
youthful sense, was not for me, of course, and never again could be. I
think I was free from illusions on that point. But I believed I might
be a tolerable companion for such a woman as Mrs. Oldcastle, and I
felt that her companionship would be a thing very delightful to me.
After all, she had presumably had her love affair, and was now a fully
matured woman. Why then should I not definitely lay aside my plans--which
even unconventional Sidney Heron thought fantastic--and ask this
altogether charming woman to be my wife? Though I could never play the
passionate lover, my aesthetic sense was far from unconscious or
unappreciative of all her purely womanly charm, her grace and beauty
of person, as apart from her delightful mental qualities.

I mused over the question through an entire morning, and when the
luncheon bugle sounded had arrived at no definite conclusion regarding
it.

That afternoon it happened that, as I sat chatting with Mrs.
Oldcastle---we were now in full view of the Australian coast, a rather
monotonous though moving picture which was occupying the attention of
most passengers--our conversation turned upon the age question; how
youth was ended in the twentieth year for some people, whilst with
others it was prolonged into the thirtieth and even the fortieth year;
and, in the case of others again,