oung and beautiful
now, but not so very many years shall pass before your lovely skin
becomes coarse and muddy, and your teeth yellow, and the wrinkles
appear about your mouth and eyes. You have not so very many years
before you in which to collect sensations, and the recollection of
one's loves is, perhaps, the greatest pleasure left to one's old
age. To be virtuous, my dear, is admirable, but there are so many
interpretations of virtue. For myself, I can say that I have never
regretted the temptations to which I succumbed, but often the
temptations I have resisted. Therefore, love, love, love! And
remember that if love at sixty in a man is sometimes pathetic, in a
woman at forty it is always ridiculous. Therefore, take your youth
in both hands and say to yourself, "Life is short, but let me live
before I die!"_'

She did not show the letter to Ferdinand.

* * * * *

Next day it rained. Valentia retired to a room at the top of the house
and began to paint, but the incessant patter on the roof got on her
nerves; the painting bored her, and she threw aside the brushes in
disgust. She came downstairs and found Ferdinand in the dining-room,
standing at the window looking at the rain. It came down in one
continual steady pour, and the water ran off the raised brickwork of the
middle of the street to the gutters by the side, running along in a
swift and murky rivulet. The red brick of the opposite house looked cold
and cheerless in the wet.... He did not turn or speak to her as she came
in. She remarked that it did not look like leaving off. He made no
answer. She drew a chair to the second window and tried to read, but she
could not understand what she was reading. And she looked out at the
pouring rain and the red brick house opposite. She wondered why he had
not answered.

The innkeeper brought them their luncheon. Ferdinand took no notice of
the preparations.

'Will you come to luncheon, Mr White?' she said to him. 'It is quite
ready.'

'I beg your pardon,' he said gravely, as he took his seat.

He looked at her quickly, and then immediately dropping his eyes, began
eating. She wished he would not look so sad; she was very sorry for him.

She made an observation and he appeared to rouse himself. He replied
and they began talking, very calmly and coldly, as if they had not known
one another five minutes. They talked o