t it was very quiet out there, and he could
smell the heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird
uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star
shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years
of youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real
tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything.
Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and
leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not
make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country
night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece. There were
his pet bronzes--a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a
greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.
'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a
thousand years of life before them!

'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old before
her time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as possible, and
grey from soiling that bright hair. He might live another five years.
She would be well over thirty by then. 'How much?' She had none of his
blood in her! In loyalty to the tenor of his life for forty years and
more, ever since he married and founded that mysterious thing, a family,
came this warning thought--None of his blood, no right to anything! It
was a luxury then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old
man's whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was
vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he
was gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.
And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress,
fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him. Why! She cared
nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.
But she was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her
beauty and grace. One had no right to inflict an old man's company, no
right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for no
reward! Pleasure must be paid for in this world. 'How much?' After all,
there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren would never miss
that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he could
leave it where he liked, allow himself this little pleasure. He went