"Deceive her of course, Nicholas. It is a painful necessity that my kind
heart forces me to perpetrate."

He was smoking contemplatively.

I laughed--.

"You see, dear boy--one can't be brutal with the little darlings, so
that is the only course open to one, for their limited reasoning power
does not enable them to grasp that it is not one's fault at all when one
ceases to care--the trouble lies with their own weakening
attraction.--So one has to go on bluffing until they themselves weary,
or find out inadvertently that one's affection has been transferred!"

"Don't you think there are some to whom you could tell the truth?"

"I have not met any--if they do exist."

"If I were a woman it would insult me far more for a man to think I was
so stupid that he could deceive me, than if he said frankly he no longer
cared."

"Probably--but then women don't reason in that way--you might prove by
every law of logic that it was because they themselves had disillusioned
you, and that you had no control over the coming or going of your
emotion--but at the end of your peroration they would still reproach you
for being a fickle brute, and believe themselves blameless, and sinned
against!"

"It is all very difficult!"--I sighed unconsciously--.

--"Are you in some mess, my son?" George asked concernedly.--"In your
case with Suzette, money can always smooth things--she has perhaps been
annoying?"

"I have entirely finished with Suzette--George, how a man pays for all
his follies--Have you, with all your affairs, ever got off scot free?"

George leaned back in his chair--his well cut face which expresses as a
rule a rather kindly whimsical cynicism grew stern--and his very voice
altered.

"Nicholas--one has to pay one's shot every time--A man pays in money, or
in jewels or in disgrace, or in regret and remorse--and he has to
calculate beforehand to what extent that which he desires is worth the
price which will become due--It is a brainless idiot who does not
calculate, or who laments when he has to stump up. I admit women are of
supreme interest to me, and their companionship and affection--bought or
otherwise--are necessary to my existence--So I resignedly discharged my
debt every time."

"How will you pay it then about Violetta whom you say is an angel, and
blameless?"

"I shall have some disgusting moments of discomfort and remorse--and
feel a moral Bluebeard--I shan't go scot free--."

"And she--? That won't hel