y Rochester--there would be such
risk--because when you are married to a man, it is possible to get much
fonder of him. Jim is a year younger than I am--It would be a strain,
perhaps in a year or two--especially if I got fond."

"You had better take the richer," I told her--"Money stands by one, it
is an attraction which even the effects of war never varies or lessens,"
and I could hear that there was bitterness in my voice.

"You are quite right," Nina said, taking no notice of it--"but I don't
want money--I have enough for every possible need, and my boy has his
own. I want something kind and affectionate to live with."

"You want a master--and a slave."

"Yes."

"Nina, when you loved me--what did you want?"

"Just you, Nicholas--just you."

"Well, I am here now, but an eye and a leg gone, and a crooked shoulder,
changes me;--so it is true love--even the emotion of the soul, depends
upon material things--"

Nina thought for a while.

"Perhaps not the emotion of the soul--if we have souls?--but what we
know of love now certainly does. I suppose there are people who can love
with the soul, I am not one of them."

"Well, you are honest, Nina."

She had her coffee and liqueur, she was graceful and composed and
refined, either Jim or Rochester will have a very nice wife.

Burton coughed when she had left.

"Out with it, Burton!"

"Mrs. Ardilawn is a kind lady, Sir Nicholas."

"Charming."

"I believe you'd be better with some lady to look after you, Sir--."

"To hell with you. Telephone for Mr. Maurice--I don't want any woman--we
can play piquet."

This is how my day ended--.

Maurice and piquet--then the widow and the divorcee for dinner--and now
alone again! The sickening rot of it all.

* * * * *

_Sunday_--Nina came for tea--she feels that I am a great comfort to her
in this moment of her life, so full of indecision--It seems that Jim has
turned up too, at the Ritz, where Rochester still is, and that his
physical charm has upset all her calculations again.

"I am really very worried Nicholas," she said, "and you, who are a dear
family friend"--I am a family friend now!--"ought to be able to help
me."

"What the devil do you want me to do, Nina?--outset them both, and ask
you to marry me?"

"My dearest Nicholas!" it seemed to her that I had suggested that she
should marry father Xmas! "How funny you are!"

Once it was the height of her desire--Nina is eight